The Potential Cause

These alarming statistics begs the question: What could be causing the student loan crisis epidemic? A few theories:

1. Rising cost of college tuition and college material like books. According to a research from credit.com, From 1971 to 2019, the cost of tuition has risen 145% year after year. This means that students have to take out more and more debt in order to pay for college expenses.
   
   
2. The cost of living in particular states and cities. My hypothesis is that the state and city students attend school will have an impact on the amount of student loan they take on because students don’t just use student loans to pay for college tuition, they also use their student loans to cover living expenses. This amounts to rising number of student loans to cover the cost of living in a big city or big state. If you go to school in a city and state that is relatively cheap, then the amount of student loan that you have to take out to cover living expenses is much lower than someone attending school in a big city. This article by the chronicle of higher education shows just how higher cost of living can impact a student’s budget.
   
   
3. Gullible young people and under-informed parents. This may sound unbelievable, but there are a lot of parents that encourage their kids to “take out as much loan as possible and get as many degrees as possible.” Such nonsensical advise typically come from ignorant parent who never had student loans or didn’t attend college and have no clue that the pop culture “take out a student loan, get the degree, and pay it back later when you get a job with your degree” is fluffy fake false advice. This advice could also emerge from parents who has tons of student loans but still believe the media infatuated mindset of “the school you go to is a determinant of success or taking out loans is the only way to attain higher education.” Such ungodly advice could also materialize itself from parents who went to school many years ago when you could pay for one year of college from your summer job.

They have no clue the emotional and mental trauma and stress and financial hardship they will experience in the future as a result of accumulating so much debt. So, when you have ignorant parents and ignorant kids, who are fed lies by pop culture media, then you’ve got yourself a perfect storm and a perfect combination of people who will sign the dotted line and collect massive amounts of student loans just to get a piece of paper that may or may not be useful in the future.

A research study by youthtruthsurvey.org explains how many students are actually prepared for college and the real world after college. These are students going into college without being fully aware of what’s ahead of them. And this research study shows how many students go to college and never finish because that is not what they want in life. These are students that took out college student loans but didn’t get the matching degree.

4. Going to out of state school. When you are an out of state student, you are more likely to pay 2 to 3 times what in state students pay for college. It is always best to go to school in state to keep the cost of education low. This research shows just how out of state education can cost up to $10,000 or more per year vs in state education

5. Going to a private for profit school. It is no secret that private for profit colleges are exactly what they sound like…”A complete Rip Off.” For profit colleges are wolves dressed like a dog. They seem friendly upfront and pretend their mission is to educate you, but everybody knows their true identity and reason for existence is to milk you money dry and bankrupt you if they can while simultaneously flourishing and filling their bank accounts with dough. You can find out more about how private colleges are ripping off unsuspecting victims in the book: Weapons of Math Destruction by Cath O’Neil.

I am sure there are many more reasons contributing to the student loan crisis, but the 5 reasons I listed above is enough to get the point across that we need to do something about the student loan crisis.