Student loans still growing faster than any other debt and now most likely to be 90-days-plus delinquent
Back in 2010, student loan debt outstanding in the United States surpassed outstanding credit card debt. Student loan debt hit the $1 trillion mark in 2013. It’s still the fastest growing consumer debt and a lot of it isn’t getting paid back. That’s according to the most recent consumer debt report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released on February 18, 2014.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York tracks student loans, both those issued by the federal government and private banks, and releases a quarterly report. In the 2013 year-end report (Q4 2013), outstanding student loan balances reported on credit reports increased to $1.08 trillion, a $114 billion increase for 2013. About 11.5% of student loan balances are 90+ days delinquent or in default. That makes them both the fastest growing and the most troubled type of consumer loan. (Click on the chart above to see a larger version).
I created this time series chart to show how student loan debt has grown over the past decade. (Click on the chart to see a larger version. Student debt is colored in blue.) The data came from this page on
Knowledge pills, robo-graders, brain implants and other dystopian education technology
It’s been a good week for the weird fringes of ed-tech. On Tuesday, Nicholas Negroponte took the stage at the 30th anniversary of TED, the starry technology-entertainment-design conference. He’s the mastermind of One Laptop Per Child. It pioneered the idea of low-cost personal devices for students around the world. Negroponte has been criticized as an extreme apologist for the “teachers don’t matt
