How student loan debt became a trillion-dollar problem for Americans | CNN Politics

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

57% : "The Guaranteed Student Loan program is really the big original student loan program, and it was modeled off the mortgage program," said Elizabeth Shermer, a historian and associate professor at Loyola University Chicago who has researched and written about student loans.
53% : "It makes it more profitable to be a part of it because you can buy and sell student debt, just like you could mortgage," Shermer said.
52% : CNN -- Millions of Americans have student loan debt, amassing to more than $1.6 trillion by the end of last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
49% : The Federal Reserve data shows people under the age of 30 are more likely to have student loan debt compared with older adults - underscoring the crippling burden on another generation of Americans.
49% : Using the federal mortgage program as a guide allowed the government to avoid direct investment into colleges, she said, but mortgages and student loans are not the same.
48% : Student debt has not always been a crisis.
46% : 1990s: Direct loans To fix the issues caused by modeling student loans on mortgages, the William Ford Direct Student Loan program, or the Direct Loan Program, was enacted in 1992.
43% : Federal loans rose quickly due to the formation of new, private loans and the pressure to cut taxes.
39% : Another reason why private loans became more critical was pressure in Washington for Congress to cut taxes and cut spending, she said.

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