How much debt is too much?: defining benchmarks for manageable student debt

Many discussions of student loan repayment focus on those students for whom repayment is a problem and conclude that the reliance on debt to finance postsecondary education is excessive. However, from both a pragmatic perspective and a logical perspective, a more appropriate approach is to develop different benchmarks for students in different circumstances in order to differentiate between those students whose repayment requirements are excessive and those for whom debt burdens are manageable. The purpose of this report is to establish a range of empirically derived thresholds for manageable student debt in order to (a) provide good advice to students as they make decisions about financing their postsecondary education, and (b) inform the design of loan forgiveness and debt management programs intended to relieve excessive debt burdens.

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