A new report raises even more alarms: It's likely that as many as 1 in 4 borrowers was carrying a past-due student loan balance in the third quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Monday.
Indeed, the New York Fed put the latest outstanding student loan balance at $870 billion. That's more than the total credit card debt, $693 billion, and car loan debt, $730 billion.
The average balance per borrower: $23,300.
Montana Tech doesn't have to deal with this issue very often. Even though
55% of our students take out loans to pay for their education,
the default rate is around 2-3%. This is not a positive trend for the nation though, through the mortgage crisis we have seen what can happen if too many people have bad debts they cannot pay back. Let's hope this isn't the next bubble about to burst that will take the whole economy down with it!
