State Disinvestment in Higher Education Has Led to an Explosion of Student-Loan Debt - Elizabeth Baylor, Center for American Progress

The nation’s postsecondary education system is increasingly reliant on student-loan debt. According to the most recent accounting by the Department of Education, there are more than $1 trillion in federal student loans outstanding. During the 2007–08 school year, 24 percent of undergraduate students at public institutions borrowed federal student loans to pay for their education—the same level of borrowing recorded during the 2003–04 school year. However, the share of students borrowing at public colleges jumped sharply after the onset of the Great Recession to 30 percent during the 2011–12 school year. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/higher-education/report/2014/12/03/102407/state-disinvestment-in-higher-education-has-led-to-an-explosion-of-student-loan-debt/