ASLP: College Board Gives Clearer Picture of Borrowing

 Washington, D.C.— America’s Student Loan Providers today released a statement in response to the College Board's 2006 Updates to Education Pays and Trends in Student Aid .

“The College Board’s 2006 Updates to Education Pays and Trends in Student Aid (Trends) have made an important contribution to the continuing debates about access to higher education and financial aid.  The Updates highlight the important role that federal student loans play in helping students and families pay for postsecondary education.  These trends, which help paint a clearer picture of how much students are actually borrowing, include:

• Most students graduate without incurring large student loan burdens.  “38 percent of bachelor’s degree recipients from four-year public colleges did not borrow at all,” the College Board wrote, and of those who did borrow, “30 percent had less than $10,000 in debt when they graduated.”
  
• Median debt levels have hardly changed since 1999-2000.  “Between 1999–2000 and 2003-04, median debt levels declined in inflation-adjusted dollars for all graduates except those earning associate degrees from for-profit institutions,” Trends reports.  Additionally, average loan amounts for undergraduates, adjusted for inflation, actually declined over the last decade.
  
• In general, students aren’t taking out bigger federal student loans.  Recent growth in federal student loan volume has more to do with an increase in the number of borrowers and loans issued.
  
• Large increases in graduate student borrowing are a bigger factor in the overall growth in student borrowing than that of undergraduates.

“The College Board also builds a strong case for increased federal investment in higher education.  Strong need-based aid and low-cost student loan programs are essential to increasing access to postsecondary education for millions of Americans.

 “Greater federal investment is a matter of necessity.  Increasing numbers of young people and adults are going to college.  As the College Board points out, the number of full-time college students grew by almost 30 percent since 2000; moreover, the largest and most diverse high school classes in history are graduating over the next few years. 

 “Finally, the new data on the earnings gap between college and high school graduates demonstrate that a college education remains the best investment for most people.  As education pays, so do student loans.”