Unpaid Student loans top $1 trillion

From Politico:

. . . . outstanding student loans this year will exceed $1 trillion for the first time.

In addition, the amount of student loans taken out last year was greater than $100 billion, another new record, according to USA Today, citing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The $1 trillion of outstanding loans means that Americans now owe more on student loans than on their credit cards. While students have been racking up educational loans, American consumers have been paying down credit cards and home loans.

The average fulltime undergraduate student borrowed $4,963 in 2010, up 63 percent from a decade earlier, even after adjusting for inflation, the report says.

Meanwhile, with a greater loan burden, the percentage of borrowers that defaulted on their student debt also rose — from 6.7 percent in 2007 to 8.8 percent in 2009. . . .