Student,Loans,Now,Outpace,Revo education Student Loans Now Outpace Revolving Consumer Debt

Some forms of parent involvement with the school such as communications with school, volunteering, attending school events and parent--parent connections appeared to have little effect on student achievement, especially in high school. Helpi Translation jobs are undertaken by professional translators who are well versed with at least two languages.Translation can work at two levels: inter-state or regional language translation and inter-national or foreign language translation.

According to theFederal Reserve, outstanding student loans in June reached the $830 billionmark. In comparison, revolving consumer debt — comprised mostly ofcredit card balances — was $826.5 billion.The federal government backs the majority ofoutstanding student loans —about $665 billion, based on about$605 billion allocated in the current fiscal year's budget, combinedwith almost $60 billion in additional stimulus money earmarked forstudent loans. According to FinAid.org, outstanding non-federally backed private student loansaccount for the remaining $168 billion in student loan debt. MarkKantrowitz of FinAid.org says his estimates are conservative, and the totalvalue of private student loans could actually be substantially higher.More People Returning to College — andCollege Loans To be fair, many factors are at work to explainthis shift in national debt levels. At its peak in the fall of 2008, U.S.consumer debt reached nearly $1 trillion. Since then, confronting aweak economy, stagnant wages, and an epidemic of foreclosures, U.S.consumers have made a concerted effort to reduce their outstanding consumerdebts and have succeeded in retiring about 15 percent of theirrevolving credit balances. At the same time, the need for college loans hasgone up as more people, left unemployed by the current recession, return tocollege or enter college for the first time. According to the U.S. Departmentof Education, college enrollment increased by 14 percent between 1987and 1997. By comparison, college enrollment increased by 26 percentbetween 1997 and 2007, and full-time students represented the majority of thegrowth in enrollment. The NationalCenter for Education Statisticspredicts that between 2006 and 2017, enrollments for students over the age of25 will increase by nearly 20 percent.Rising Cost of College Contributes to Increase inStudent Loans The cost of higher education continues to risefaster than the rate of inflation and has risen more than twice as fast as U.S. householdincome since 1970. The Higher Education Price Index (HEPI), a predictivemeasure of the costs of higher education, showed that the inflation rate forhigher education in 2009 was 2.3 percent — 64 percenthigher than the overall consumer inflation rate of 1.4 percent.Public higher education institutions are becomingless affordable over time. According to the HEPI, costs at public, four-yearinstitutions have risen faster than costs at private and two-year schools. Thisdivergence is significant since, over time, this trend, if it continues, willeat away at the cost advantage four-year public institutions currently holdover private schools and will gradually eliminate lower-cost options for lower-and middle-income students who wish to attend college. Federal Financial Aid Fails to Keep Pace WithCollege TuitionOver time, the distribution of federal financialaid has shifted from grants to student loans. According to the 2008–09 year-endreport on federal Pell Grants, slightly more than half of the 16.4 millionPell Grant applications received by the U.S. Department of Education wereeligible for funding. In comparison, the Education Department routinelyreceived 65 percent or more eligible Pell Grant applications in the1980s. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the percentage of Pell Grant applicationseligible for funding dropped into the 50- to 60-percent range, and by the2005–06 and 2006–07 academic years, fewer than half of the Pell Grantapplications submitted to the Department of Education were deemed eligible forfunding. The average Pell Grant award remains stubbornlylow: As of the 2008–09 academic year, the average Pell Grant award has neverexceeded $3,000 in any given year.At the same time, lending caps for student loansissued through the federal Stafford Loan program have risen. Currently,eligible undergraduates can borrow up to a lifetime maximum of $23,000 insubsidized Stafford student loans and up to a total of $31,000 in bothsubsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans.Alongside this shift, federal limits on studentgrants and student loans have not kept pace with the cost of a college education. In a recent issue, U.S.News and World Report estimated that the average annual cost ofattending a four-year private, non-profit institution was $35,000; the annualcost of attending a four-year public institution was nearly $20,000. Thesefigures mean that a student who qualifies for the maximum cumulativeundergraduate Stafford student loan award would still need to come up withbetween $50,000 and $110,000 in additional financial aid in order to complete afour-year degree at a U.S.higher education institution.In the face of rapidly rising higher educationcosts and federal financial aid that has not kept pace with either the growingnumber of financially needy applicants or the need for more assistance perapplicant, many students are turning to private student loans to fill in thefinancial aid gaps. Most private student loans can tend to carry higherinterest rates than federal student loans, which — in part —–accounts for the growing student loan debt in the United States.Resources:private student loans  student loans  college enrollment trends