Here are the key findings from the Pew Research Center Analysis.

* One-quarter (24%) of 2008 bachelor’s degree graduates at for-profit schools borrowed more than $40,000, compared with 5% of graduates at public institutions and 14% at not-for-profit schools.
* Roughly one-in-four recipients of an associate’s degree or certificate borrowed more than $20,000 at both private for-profit and private not-for-profit schools, compared with 5% of graduates of public schools.
* Graduates of private for-profit schools are demographically different from graduates in other sectors. Generally, private for-profit school graduates have lower incomes, and are older, more likely to be from minority groups, more likely to be female, more likely to be independent of their parents and more likely to have their own dependents.
* Although private for-profit schools specialize in different fields of study than do public and private not-for-profit schools, the differences in borrowing patterns persist within fields of study. For almost every field of study at every level, students at private for-profit schools are more likely to borrow and tend to borrow larger amounts than students at public and private not-for-profit schools.

Here’s some more from the report –

Undergraduate college student borrowing has risen dramatically in recent years. Graduates who received a bachelor’s degree in 2008 borrowed 50% more (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than their counterparts who graduated in 1996, while graduates who earned an associate’s degree or undergraduate certificate in 2008 borrowed more than twice what their counterparts in 1996 had borrowed, according to a new analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project.

I’m sure there are people who look at this and say these young people are borrowing too much money and that may often be true. But if you follow the costs of going to college, tuition, books, etc., you come to a different conclusion. Since students can borrow money to a guarenteed level, tuition and fees will rise toward that level each year. When the level is raised, the college and university costs start their inexorable increase to get all the loan money possible. When the top borrowing amount no longer works for a number of institutions, the borrowing cap is raised and it starts all over again.

Tuition costs have increased at twice the level of medical costs increases over the last decade. That’s right. Even the insurance companies couldn’t keep up with the colleges and universities of the United States.

James Pilant