A Third of All Americans Have Dealt With Student Debt
More
than one-third of Americans are paying or
have paid student loans and a sizable number of them are delaying other
major
purchases because of it.
According
to a Harris Poll on education issues,
36 percent of all respondents said they are currently paying or have
paid
student loans in the past. Two-thirds of them said they had delayed
spending on
or saving money for other things because of the student debt they had.
Nearly
two in five (39 percent) said student debt
had stopped them from beginning to save for retirement while 30 percent
they
had delayed buying or leasing a car and the same number said they had
not
bought a home for the same reason. Thirty-one percent of respondents
said they
had delayed creating a college fund for their own children because they
were
still paying their own student debts.
Smaller
numbers said they had delayed getting
married (14 percent) or having children (13 percent).
Somewhat
discouraging is that the percentages of
respondents delaying purchases or savings was higher than was the case
when a
group of respondents were asked the same questions two years ago. The
percentage
of those who delayed saving for a child's education increased by 9
percentage points
while 6 pointst more said they put off purchasing a home and 4 points
more
said they had not yet started saving for retirement because of their
student
debt.
Nevertheless,
close to two-thirds of Americans
surveyed said they believed the investment they had made in their
higher
education was worth it. Satisfaction was highest among those who
attended
private, not-for-profit colleges (69 percent), followed by public
universities
(64 percent), online colleges (61 percent) and private, for-profit
colleges (58
percent).
The
Harris Poll surveyed 2,273 adults in the
United States online the week of July 15.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.