Which Colleges Should We Blame for the Student-Debt Crisis?
▻http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/which-colleges-should-we-blame-for-the-student-debt-crisis/278558
So with that in mind, here are three key points:
Public colleges, because they educate so many students, generate the most debt overall.
Private nonprofit schools, generate an outsized amount of student debt, but a relatively small portion of troubled borrowers.
The for-profits have contributed in an especially malign way to the debt problem, both generating a disproportionate amount of loans, and an even more disproportionate amount of student loan defaults.
Why You Should Blame For-Profit Colleges, Especially
That said, for-profit colleges are the worst offenders in another respect: their alums are singularly incapable of paying back their loans. Despite educating just a small fraction of students, these institutions contributed a full 47 percent of defaults among students who began repaying their debt in 2009. By comparison, the private nonprofits, despite the truckloads of loans they generate, were only responsible for 13 percent of defaults.