Ramin Mazaheri
Press TV, Chicago

In the United States, college education is so expensive that it is the second leading cause of debt, surpassing both credit card debt and auto loans. Only mortgage debt generates more money for banks.

Forty percent of student borrowers haven’t even graduated from college, but the good news – half of all Millennials – those between the ages of 24 and 40 – have a college degree. However, instead of providing a path to successful employment, college is often a downward spiral into crushing debt.

The average student in the United States now leaves college with $ 37,000 in student loan debt. University tuition fees have increased by almost 1,200% since the late 1970s.

Young people under 24, known as Generation Z, face the same prospect of expensive higher education combined with national economic stagnation since 2008.

During the election campaign, Democrats raised high hopes by talking about an executive order canceling up to $ 50,000 in student debt, but President Joe Biden has just declared: “I will not make it”, and he will only consider $ 10,000 in debt relief.

These huge debts have forced the millennial class to often delay stages of maturity such as buying a house, investing, pursuing higher education, getting married, and having children. All of this depresses the economy, creates more social instability and disagreement, and all the while economic inequality is skyrocketing in favor of lenders.

The student debt crisis is apparently a uniquely American problem, and 45 million Americans owe nearly $ 2 trillion in student debt. The immense scope of the problem seems to ensure that the country’s young adults will keep this issue in the limelight for years, if not decades, until debt relief is granted or wages are massively increased. .