More on Bearing the Costs of Education

Following up on my post yesterday on educational cost inflation, NPR today has information from a Sallie Mae/Gallup study (via The Atlantic) on how students are paying for college (there are lot of other very informative charts in the study and it is worth checking out): 

Sallie Mae/Gallup via The AtlanticThere are a couple of interesting points. First, in families that borrow, they borrow over $10,000 a year. That's a lot of borrowing when one considers the cost over the 2, 4, 6, or 8 years of college. Another interesting point is that the amount of scholarships and grants for the two groups are almost equal. One would think that the grants and scholarships would be more for the borrowing families. 

But, overall, the most surprising numbers are the top numbers of $17,143 and $22,821 spent on higher education in academic year 08-09. That's just flat a lot of bones to be dropping each year on education. Again considered over the 4 year span, the total cost of a four year higher education is now approaching the cost of a home. If you are a family that is attempting the bear this cost right now ... the crisis isn't coming ... its already here.