The majority of those that go to college are being saddled with a debt that averages $25,000 and in some worst case scenarios is in the $300,000 range. We have people graduating from college and having ALL of their earnings go to pay off student debt. These student debts are not dis-chargeable through bankruptcy. If you go into arrears your pay will be garnished and your IRS refunds seized.
This situation creates desperate people who see no future as they know they will never be able to pay their way out of debt for the rest of their lives even though they work full time in their chosen field.
The link below has a map showing the states and learning institutions most likely to have the highest debt loads.
Calling student-loan debt "the next debt bomb for the U.S. economy" (as a bankruptcy attorneys group did earlier this month) may be a stretch, but debt loads can indeed be large—and vary tremendously from school to school, regardless of whether the institution is public, private, or for-profit. The percentage of students taking out loans ranges even more widely—from fewer than one in 10 at Yale University and Midland College in Texas, to 100 percent at the American Institute Of Business (and 17 other private schools).
The map below draws on data from the New America Foundation's Federal Education Budget Project, and details the debt loads at more than 1,800 four-year colleges and universities.* State-level averages are color-coded by quintile in the map; click on any dot to find details for a particular school, or use the slider to filter by percentage of students taking out loans. For more details on the data used here, please see the fine print below.