Student Debt Squeezing Parents And Children Simultaneously

Data analyzed exclusively by The Associated Press, along with surveys about families and rising student debt loads, show that: Longer repayment schedules, more midcareer workers returning to school and additional borrowing for children's education. The average they have in college savings plans is just $4,000, compared with a $20,000 average for teenagers' parents who aren't still repaying their own school loans, Pew found. — Student debt is surpassing groceries as a primary expense for many borrowers, with the gap widening most for younger families. Roughly 25 years ago, federal policies began to encourage borrowing on a mass scale to cover soaring college costs. Policymakers figured that borrowers could afford the debt because college degrees would all but guarantee comfortable incomes. Repayment has increasingly required financial sacrifices because as college borrowing has climbed, earnings have stagnated for people with only bachelor's degrees, according to data provided by Georgetown University. The government was raising borrowing limits, introducing unsubsidized Stafford loans and incentivizing private lenders. The push to borrow that began in the 1990s was premised on the notion that virtually every degree — regardless of the school or the major — could more than pay for itself because college graduates would command premium incomes, explained Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of "Will College Pay Off?" — NO CHOICE BUT DEBT [...] recently, few researchers had explored the relationship between parents' student debt and meager college savings for their children. Pew's report warned that parents' student debt loads "could fuel an intergenerational legacy of debt" within families. Yet many Gen X-ers have felt compelled to return to college or attend graduate school to improve their earnings prospects. Earning a bachelor's degree at Azusa