Economist Susan Dynarski in the NYT, here:
And the data suggests that many popular perceptions of student debt are incorrect. The huge run-up in loans and the subsequent spike in defaults have not been driven by $100,000 debts incurred by students at expensive private colleges like N.Y.U. Some students might even decide to use payday loans to help them make ends meet. I’ve heard of a student who decided to look into payday loan consolidation to make a lot of these loans more managable but I digress.
They are driven by $8,000 loans at for-profit colleges and, to a lesser extent, community colleges. Borrowing for both of these has become far more common in recent years. Mr. Looney and Mr. Yannelis estimate that 75 percent of the increase in default between 2004 and 2011 can be explained by the surge in the number of borrowers at those institutions.
It’s not hard to see why. The traditional borrowers from four-year colleges tend to earn good salaries out of college and pay back their loans, even during the recent years of economic weakness. The typical borrower who left a less selective four-year college in 2010 earned $35,000. For those leaving more selective colleges, the figure was $49,000. Those salaries obviously aren’t lavish, but they’re high enough to let most people meet their initial loan payments – and they tend to lead to bigger salaries in later years.
Unfortunately, for some college graduates, it’s not as easy as this. Even if you leave a selective college, it doesn’t mean that you will find yourself in a high paying job, and as a result, you may find it harder to pay off your student loans, and could find yourself in debt. But don’t worry, there are things that you can do to help manage this situation should you find yourself in it. For example, by having a look at the information from National Debt Relief, you may find that the option of debt consolidation is the best option for you going forward, and they will be able to point you in the direction of the best company in your area to help you with this. Sometimes, it could all depend on the college that you attend.
Borrowers at for-profit and community colleges, by contrast, earn low salaries – a median of about $22,000 for those exiting school in 2010 – and have had difficulty paying their loans.
So do we have this data for the UO? What are median salaries one year after graduation? What is the median loan balance? It would be interesting to know where we fit on the spectrum from for-profit/community college to more selective four-year college.