We have written frequently on this blog about the problem of student debt and the growing level of people who are delinquent on student loans in this country. Student borrowing has now outpaced all credit card debt in the United States, topping $1 trillion in 2011 and growing steadily since then.
Since student loans are among the types of debt that are difficult or impossible to discharge in a bankruptcy proceeding, this leaves students to make the hard choice between falling behind on large payments to their student loans and meeting obgliations to pay for regular living expenses such as mortgages or car payments.
A survey by Wells Fargo Bank showed that this difficult is not lost on the millennial generation, who holds most of the student debt in this country. When asked, more than one-third of the more than 1,400 people who were surveyed said that they believe they would have been better off working during the time that they were in college, rather than proceeding to higher education and ending up in massive debt.
As a long-term economics principle, it is still widely debated whether or not that will turn out to be true, but the fact is that in the short-term many young people wish that they had not rushed to college and into debt.
Some people are able to modify their student loans or consolidate them under a single interest rate, but that depends on the specifics of their loan agreement with private lenders. Students who have borrowed from the federal government may be eligible for loan forgiveness programs if they focus their post-collegiate work on public service jobs.
Source: Forbes, “Student Loan Problems: One Third of Millennials Regret Going to College,” Halal Touryalai, May 22, 2013