Underemployment and Student Debt

Abstract

This paper investigates the causes of the student debt crisis. Some authors have suggested that the increase in tuition, which they believe to be a result of either less state funding or more competition between schools, has forced students to take out more money in student loans, causing the crisis. Other authors see underemployment as the cause because students are unable to find substantial work after graduation in order to afford the monthly payments on their student loans. After looking at multiple data sets from several sources, this paper concludes that underemployment is the cause of the student debt crisis; the difficulty of repaying student loans, and not the price of a college education, has caused the crisis.