How Student Debt Harms the Economy

Mitchell E. Daniels: How Student Debt Harms the Economy - WSJ:
"To the growing catalog of damage caused by the decades-long run-up in the cost of higher education, we may have to add another casualty.
On top of the harm high tuition and other charges are inflicting on young people, and the way their struggles are holding back today’s economy, we must add the worry that tomorrow’s economy will suffer, too.
Ever-escalating tuitions, especially in the past dozen years, have produced an explosion of associated debt, as students and their families resorted to borrowing to cover college prices that are the only major expense item in the economy that is growing faster than health care. 
According to the Federal Reserve, educational debt has shot past every other category—credit cards, auto loans, refinancings—except home mortgages, reaching some $1.3 trillion this year.
Analyses in The Wall Street Journal and by Experian in 2014 show that 40 million people, roughly 70% of recent graduates, are now borrowers.
In the class of 2014, the average borrower left with an average load of $33,000."