College Debt Quotes

I don't come from a family that had the money to put me through college, so I left school with $100,000 in student loan debt.

There's a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans.

Too many young people graduate laden with debts that take years, if not decades, to pay off.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders talked about free public higher education going forward, but not dealing with this burden of debt, which has really locked a generation into kind of a hopeless future right now.

America needs education reform on all levels to expand quality schools, build on past successes, and lower college debt.

We hear the stories every day now: the father who puts on a suit every morning and leaves the house so his daughter doesn't know he lost his job, the recent college grad facing up to the painful reality that the only door that's open to her after four years of study and a pile of debt is her parents'. These are the faces of the Obama economy.

I was a first-generation college student. This was supposed to be the ticket to prosperity. But it wasn't. I left college with a mountain of debt and no practical skills.

If you owe $50,000 for your education, you are not going to be able to start a small business when you graduate.

College gives people learning and also takes away future opportunities by loading the next generation down with debt.

Let's get one thing straight: No one wants Stafford loan interest rates to increase.

I felt like I've needed to ask my parents up until about four years ago about everything. They have helped me tremendously, I came out of college with no debt. Everything they made, they just poured into my education.

At Cornell University, it was well known that after five years on Wall Street, you could expect to be making half a million a year in salary and bonus; after 10 years, you could expect a million or more. I had 60 grand of university debt, and my parents had no retirement. I needed that money.

Many students graduate from college and professional schools, including those of social work, nursing, medicine, teaching and law, with crushing debt burdens.

Student loan debt is certainly not a fitting topic for a commencement speech, but it's an issue we must confront - not only for thousands of college graduates who deserve a fair shot, but also for our economy.

I had a lot of college debt. It's very difficult to go to a university that is as expensive as Stanford and then blindly follow your passions when they don't immediately make money out of the gate.

If you just don't have any idea what you want to do, the worst thing you can do is go to law school. If you can go to college, maybe it's fine to have four years of fun and learn a little bit, that's okay, but if you have to go two hundred thousand dollars in debt, that's not something I would recommend.

The burden of student loan debt weighs heavily on both students and families across New Jersey.

I've stood in rooms in urban, rural, and suburban parts of my state and asked a room of middle class voters to raise their hands if the college debt of someone in their family is affecting their financial situation. Without exception, at least three quarters of the room will raise their hand.

Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for, or any work at all. So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

I'd like to see college debt levels drop by a lot, but I'm not quite sure what the best way to do that is.

We tell people to go to college, but when they cross the stage, they cross the stage with a degree in one hand and debt in the other that stifles their ability to be able to live that good life.

When SoFi launched in 2011, it focused squarely on the burgeoning student loan market - a market that, unlike housing, had no viable option to refinance both federal and private student loans from higher interest-rate eras.

That is especially important as more young people must take on huge debt loads to go to college.

The federal government requires that its loans be paid back within 10 years of graduation, and Harvard has pegged its loans to the same 10-year timetable. Yet despite Harvard's low default rate, the idea of years of loan debt is daunting for some students even before it's time to pay back.

For the first time in American history, it's not clear whether or not it's smart for a 17-year-old to enroll in college. It absolutely depends on the debt load and the quality of the institution. That is a change from the way things always were and, frankly, the way things always should be. It should always be a good idea to go to college.