Debates about the student loan crisis rightly concern higher education in general as well as law schools in particular. Much of the growing public debate on has been framed as follows: "College tuition and student debt levels have been increasing at a fast pace for at least two decades. These well-documented trends, coupled with an economy weakened by a major recession, have raised serious questions about whether the market for student debt is headed for a crisis, with many borrowers unable to repay their loans and taxpayers being forced to foot the bill."
In a Brookings Institution research report, Is A Student Loan Crisis on the Horizon?, Beth Akers and Matthew Chingos bring helpful data to this public debate. Specifically, they "draw on data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) administered by the Federal Reserve Board to track how the education debt levels and incomes of young households evolved between 1989 and 2010." After analyzing more than two decades of data on the financial well-being of American households the authors find that "in reality, the impact of student loans may not be as dire as many commentators fear." (For a summary of the report, click here.) While not the last word on the topic, the data are a welcome addition.