(CBS News) The rapidly swelling cost of student loan debt is not being inflated simply by unaffordable undergraduate and associate degrees as 40 percent of the $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt paid for expensive post-graduate and professional degrees.
A new report from the New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program finds that median debt loans for graduate school borrowers increased from $40,209 in 2004 to $57,000 by 2012. The median debt amassed for a masters of arts graduate increased to $58,539 from $37,965 over the same period. Borrowers at the 75th percentile of indebtedness saw jumps from $54,000 to $85,000 in inflation-adjusted data from 2004 to 2012.
