It is kind of scary thinking about the mass of student debt I have personally accumulated. After law school, I'll probably owe in excess of 70-80K. Luckily, I went to U of I so my undergrad debt is rather modest, around 10K, compared to many of my classmates who went to private schools. One of my classmates went to Cornell and is expecting around 160K in debt, another went to Notre Dame and is staring down 145K. Pretty spooky. If the economy continues to contract and unemployment increases than many of these loans could go into default if new grads can't get jobs, it is somewhat scary. I saw a stat in today's paper that in 2001 there was about 4 billion in student loans issued, in 2007 there was around 18 billion issued. That is a 350% increase in 6 years, are there really 350% more student taking loans or is just institutions (schools, lenders, etc) taking their pound of flesh?

Idawa

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