Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Coming Student Loan Crunch

This article immediately got my attention, as I'm currently going to school and I'm depending on student loans to get me through this program. Fortunately, it'll be over by December, so I don't have long to go. But I'm concerned for the fall semester now, and that it'll be taken care of. I'm going to talk to the financial aid office tomorrow after class. If worse comes to worse, I'm sure I'll complete the program somehow.

A silver lining that I got from this article, is that colleges and universities will be in big trouble if there is a real collapse in student loans. And I think that could be a good thing. I'd read that college tuition rates, which used to be fairly affordable as long as you had a part-time job or something to supplement it, skyrocketed with this access to loans and easy credit. If this becomes more difficult to get, than the colleges will be in big trouble unless they make tuition more affordable. It's the same with housing, cars, and our consumer-driven economy in general. Too often, we're buying things we really aren't able to afford.

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