USA Today Hypes Student
Debt Loads
Paper features grad student with more
than double the average debt load of his peers.
By Ken Shepherd
Business & Media Institute
June 12, 2006
As graduation season wound down, the June 12 USA Today
alarmed readers with a look at the growing number of college grads
who owe more than $100,000 in student loans. But even the articles
author briefly conceded thats the exception, not the rule.
The average college senior graduated this year with
more than $19,000 in debt. Thats a problem Joe Palazzolo would love
to have, correspondent
Sandra Block
began her front-page story. Palazzolo, she continued, finished a
graduate degree in public policy from Rutgers and now has more than
$116,000 in student loans.
In fact, the Rutgers alumnus owes more than twice what
the average student in his situation would owe. According to the
2002 National Student Loan Survey by loan provider
Nellie Mae, college undergrads
borrowed an average of $18,900 while graduate students borrowed an
additional $31,700. Added together, the $50,600 total is less than
half of what Palazzolo owes.
I feel like Ive done everything I was supposed to
do, the public policy student complained to USA Today, asking,
What did I do wrong?
Block didnt say where Palazzolo earned his
undergraduate degree, nor did she mention ways the 25-year-old
graduate could have held down his debt by working a few years after
college or attending less expensive institutions. Instead, the
reporter focused only on the prescriptions of interest groups that
call for more federal regulation of student loans, such as Ralph
Naders Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and the liberal
Project on Student Debt.
Whats more, Block left out how graduate degrees help
earning potential and employment prospects. According to a 2003
survey by the federal
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS),
masters degree holders have an unemployment rate of only 3.3
percent and earn a median weekly salary of $1,064, or more than
$55,000 a year. Thats 18 percent more than Americans who earned
just a bachelors degree.
The
Business & Media Institute has repeatedly
documented the medias biases on student loans, including a
focus on debt loads over strong job opportunities.
