Lots of people have student loans: more than 45 million people. They collectively owe about $1.6 trillion.
That is, of course, a lot of debt — but amid all the national debate right now about what to do about it, it’s important to remember that not all debt is created equal, and some borrowers are struggling more than others.
“The large debts we hear about are often taken out by graduate students — people who get an MBA or who get an M.D. or get a law degree or get a master’s,” says Susan Dynarski, an economist at the University of Michigan.
Those aren’t the folks to worry about, Dynarski says. Neither are borrowers who got their bachelor’s degree — who on average have about $30,000 in loans after graduation. For many of those borrowers, the loans did their job: They allowed students to go to college, get their degrees, land a better job and, ultimately, pay back those loans.
The people who are really struggling, experts say, are the roughly 1 million borrowers who default on their student loans each year — about 7 million borrowers in total at the end of 2018, according to the latest numbers from the U.S. Education Department.