30 Americans Share How Much They Owe In Student Loans, And The Rest Of The World Is In Disbelief

College education in the US is expensive, and it doesn't have to be this way

Damjan

Published in Interesting
29 Dec 2020

30 Americans Share How Much They Owe In Student Loans, And The Rest Of The World Is In Disbelief

College education in the US is costly, and although it provides college graduates with some advantages over their competition, it also sets them back significantly. The burden of substantial debt is too much for some to bear, and they struggle to pay it off.

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American Twitter user Wee-Yum recently posted a screenshot of their student debt: $82,649.35. "This is my student loan amount," the caption read. "I don't stress because it ain't ever getting paid off." To find consolation, Wee-Yum invited others to share their student debts as well.

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Because this is a hot public topic in the US, it went viral quickly. It garnered more than 93.4K likes and received numerous replies. The amounts are staggering. The saddest part is that most of the people who shared their debts seem pretty hopeless and don't believe they will ever repay them.

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The total amount of unpaid student loans reached an all-time high in 2020—close to $1.6 trillion. Experts predict it will reach $2 trillion by 2024.

About 43% of American college graduates took some form of loan to pay for their studies. However, today, the situation is even worse. Nearly 54% of students need to take out loans to cover their educational expenses.

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Kelley Marie is one of the individuals who contributed to this thread. She was already a mother when she took out her student loan. "I knew I needed to do better for myself, for my kids' sake as well as mine. I simply could not afford college on my own, so it was a risk that I decided to take," she said.

Her total debt upon graduation was around $65,000. "I have both federal loans and private loans," she explained. "When I first graduated, the payment was unmanageable, something like $750+, so I deferred my federal loans and ended up accruing interest on my private ones. It piled up for the first several years (my first job out of school only paid about $30,000), and at that time, I was a single mother to two kids."

The program Kelley wanted was only available at a private university, and there wasn't another one in the region where she lived. "I want to say that maybe I would have chosen another field, but it really sucks to be stuck in that situation. I don't know how I could have worked more (I freelanced during college) between full-time classes and being a mother. That being said, my older girls are now 18 and 16, and I am encouraging them to take out as few loans as possible. My drowning in my own loans kept me from saving for their education. However, I can help them navigate the system in a way my parents did not. I am searching for jobs that offer grants and comparing schools."

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For Scott Quenette, another contributor to the thread, taking out a student loan was the only way to attend college. "My loan total is around $150,000, including interest," Scott said. "I've paid $18,000 so far, and it's all been interest, so I just assume I'll be paying it forever. It's all federal, so it's manageable. Just an annoying bill every month."

When asked if he thinks he made the right decision, Scott replied: "I might try a few things differently so I could actually pay it off, but at this point, it's not breaking me."

"My overall point has not been 'get me off the hook for this,' but that I could be putting that money into the economy; this is an economic stimulus more than anything," he added.

The enormous size of student debt isn't only affecting the millions of people who owe, but it also burdens the U.S. economy. Nearly 92% of student loan debt is supported by the U.S. government, making it an important political issue.