"[A]n analysis released today by a Washington think tank, based on newly available federal survey data, aims to show that the steady, long-term growth in student borrowing has intensified in recent years, and that student borrowers have increasingly turned to more expensive 'alternative' loans to meet their escalating college bills," Inside Higher Ed reports. "The report from Education Sector, which bears the none-too-subtle title 'Drowning in Debt: The Emerging Student Loan Crisis,' digs more deeply into federal data that the Project on Student Debt explored upon their release last spring. The data, from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, show an uptick (though a comparatively small one) between 2003-4 (when the survey was last conducted) and 2007-8 in the proportion of all students who took out loans of some kind. More troubling, to the authors Erin Dillon and Kevin Carey, is the sharper increase of the average amount borrowed by those who took out loans, particularly at private nonprofit and for-profit colleges, and the dramatic rise in the proportion of all undergraduates who have private loans, up to 14 percent in 2007-8 from 5 percent in 2003-4."

You can read the complete July 9, 2009 Inside Higher Ed article on-line.

Additional Media Coverage

More Students Borrow More Money to Pay for College The Chronicle of Higher Education

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