What does anyone expect? This is the year graduation arrives for the Class of 2008 global economic collapse.

The debt these young people are facing are NOT their fault. They graduated High School, were accepted to college with hopes of a good life while the economic calamity of 2008 played out.

Their parents were losing everything. I am quite confident if a study was conducted of this college graduating class there would be demographics to match the trauma of 2008 and its aftermath. This is ANOTHER symptom of the Bush economic policies.

And to think Romney stated they should be asking their parents for loans is hideous. The man is completely disconnected from any American reality, any understanding of the Middle Class and certainly no compassion for anyone except the wealthy, of which he is indulgent.

October 18, 2012

It's the latest snapshot (click here) of the growing burden of student debt and it's another discouraging one: Two-thirds of the national college class of 2011 finished school with loan debt, and those who borrowed walked off the graduation stage owing on average $26,600 — up about 5 percent from the class before.

The latest figures are calculated in a report out Thursday by the California-based Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) and likely underestimate the problem in some ways because they don't include most graduates of for-profit colleges, who typically borrow more than their counterparts elsewhere....

Now, if there is any reason for Congress to profoundly seek intervention over college debt this is the reason. These young adults are our nation's brain trust and their well being today and in the future demands attention. They are VICTIMS of the Republican elite, especially the political elite which panders to wealth and Wall Street without regret.

You'll get no argument from me that colleges need to contain their spending and lower their costs to their students, but, several dynamics played out there. Most colleges also took a huge hit of their endowments with the 2008 economic collapse. Even Harvard stopped construction when their endowment diminished in vitality. The colleges reacted by increasing tuition at a time when no parent or student could afford it and the support these students normally receive no longer existed.

There is also one aspect that seriously worried me when the economic collapse finally ballooned into everyone's reality in 2008 and that was the demand Bush's administration placed on Foundations to increase their spending to at least 5% of their value. When late 2008 hit that meant they lost monies both in their portfolios and the increased demands by the federal government to increase their spending. That has a direct relation to monies available to colleges and universities. The entire disaster to our educational system needs to be examined with policy change to stabilize REASONABLE costs to students and their families. 

If President Obama hadn't increased support to students during his administration the reality is we would have far less graduates this year. I can't say enough about this President. He upheld our nation's infrastructure during these years without sacrificing our values or survival as a nation. I can only imagine what his meetings are like. I am confident his Cabinet gets no breaks in action.