Students are borrowing dramatically more to pay for college, accelerating a trend that has wide-ranging implications for a generation of young people.
New numbers from the U.S. Education Department show that federal student-loan disbursements—the total amount borrowed by students and received by schools—in the 2008-09 academic year grew about 25% over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. The amount of money students borrow has long been on the rise. But last year far surpassed past increases, which ranged from as low as 1.7% in the 1998-99 school year to almost 17% in 1994-95, according to figures used in President Barack Obama's proposed 2010 budget.
It started with Prof. Krugman's post from yesterday called Even More Gilded where he talks about a very important but overlooked report by Prof. Emmanuel Saez. Now, this morning the front page of Huffington Post. This issue needs to catch on.
I strong urge people to read to Prof. Saez report: Striking it Rich. Here is the most striking excerpt:
So, it's not just the United States, Income Inequality has grown the most in most countries since the 1980's.
The gap between rich and poor increased in three-quarters of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development over the last two decades, the group said in a report today
Seems social mobility is also frozen and the few countries where economic equality has improved are France, Greece and Spain. The United States income inequality gap has grown exceedingly.
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