Americans owe more in student loans than credit card debt.
Consumers now owe $826.5 billion in credit card debt, compared to $829.785 billion in student loans, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But UF students’ debt isn’t increasing as drastically as the national average.
For the 2008-2009 academic year, 17,577 UF students took out more than $216 million in loans, said Rick Wilder, associate director of UF Student Financial Affairs.
That amount is about $19 million more than the loans taken out the previous year and $22 million more than borrowed in the 2006-2007 academic year.
He said these numbers show a “modest” rather than “drastic” increase and attributed the growth of money loaned to an increase in the number of students, higher tuition and the development of more loan programs.
Currently UF has about 15 loan programs, the two biggest ones being subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford Loans.
In a subsidized loan, no interest accumulates to the student’s bill until six months after leaving the university.
For the 2008-2009 academic year, UF students who borrowed money graduated owing an average of $15,932.
That is about $600 more than the previous year.
“If you can figure out another way to fund your education, then don’t borrow,” Wilder said. “If you can’t, then borrowing is a very good tool.”
Economics professor David Denslow said UF students might not take out as large or as many loans as students at other universities because of Florida Prepaid plans and Bright Futures scholarships.
Default loan rates, which represent the amount of money borrowed from the university by students and not paid back, fluctuated from 1.1 percent to 2.7 percent in the past 10 years, Wilder said.
“Our default rates are very, very low considering the size of our loan portfolio,” Wilder said. “Our students at UF are very good at paying their loans back.”
Usually students are able to pay back their loans in about ten years, but the time frame can vary if they borrowed a significant sum of money.
