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Essay On Student Debt

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The Student Debt Crisis No institution is perfect, not even Normandale, though it is better than most other community colleges, it still has its problems. Some are minor and short term like a shortage of parking spaces, but others are long term or even crippling to students financial future. The most prominent example of this is student debt. Normandale is far from the only college with this problem, almost every college in America faces this issue. Student debt is hard to avoid with 71% of students that have graduated from a four year program have an average of $29,400 in student debt in 2012 ("Average Student Loan Debt, 1993-2012." Pg.1). Student debt is a major problem that affects most young Americans, but it could be fixed with government funding of community colleges and increased regulation of for profit schools. To understand the magnitude of this problem, it is …show more content…

For starters, if you have around 30,000 of student debt, it can lower the amount of money you can save in your 401k by 350,000 (Holland, Kelley Web Pg.1). This is because you need to pay interest on your loan every year. That interest keeps people from starting retirement savings early. The later you start saving, the less interest accrues in your 401k. That is how a 30,000 loan in someone's early 20’s ends up snowballing into a massive reduction of retirement savings. Students from low income families need to borrow more money therefore, it burdens them more than wealthy students, widening the gap of inequality (Phelps, Hollis Pg. 12). The fact that student debt plagues the low and middle classes significantly more that the upper class, it plays a large part in the shrinking middle class in America. The increased difficulty of paying for college affects low income households the most. This hinders social equality, contributing to class division and the already severe wealth gap ("Introduction to The Rising Cost…” Pg.

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