Suburban students struggle with college debt - Jamie Sotonoff, Daily Herald

After graduating from the University of Notre Dame with $172,000 in college loan debt, a young suburban woman sought help from financial planner Joseph Orsolini. She told him she had secured more loans to enroll in law school and was working a retail job making $800 a month. “When she gets out (of law school), she’ll be 27 years old and $300,000 in debt,” said Orsolini, president of College Aid Planners in Glen Ellyn. “She wanted to be a prosecutor, and the average starting salary is around $57,000 a year ... but her student loans were going to cost her $42,000 annually.” It’s an extreme example of a common problem: Students facing sky-high college costs sometimes have little choice other than to shoulder tremendous debt, and then have no means to pay the loans back.