College debt

By Po-cheng Huang

Most top schools in the U.S. cost about 40,000 dollar per academic year while the average annual income of Americans are about 35,000 dollar. That number is even before living expenses, which means that the parents of the majority of American high school seniors will not be able to afford their children's college tuitions and if the child wish to go to college, he will need to get scholarship from the college or take a student loan, or both. And then that’s the start of the debt rolling life of the vast majority of Americans. According to a guest speaker at a conference I attended, she said that she was finally clear out from all of her debt at age 41 since she graduated from college, not to mention the cost of tuition today is much, much more than what it was 20 years ago. So what should the students do? I think the current U.S. government is coming up with student loans that will be much more “reasonable” than the current ones and those provided from the private sector, but fundamentally, students need to know how to manage their financial positions so that they can get out of debt as soon as possible after they join the workforce.

Reference
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123817868096759141.html
http://economy.kansascity.com/?q=node/1630
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2247255/