VALDOSTA — Whoever said that you can’t put a price on education clearly didn’t have a grasp on the current economic nature in the United States. The college debt crisis is one for the history books. Currently at a staggering $1 trillion, student-loan debt has surpassed credit card and auto loan debt in the United States, according to the Associated Press. In essence, college graduates are writing checks that their degrees can’t cash and, unfortunately, those checks have to be paid back with interest.

Student loans have more than tripled over the past decade, according to data from the Federal Reserve. Reasonably so as within the past 10 years, a college degree has transformed from a luxury to a necessity.

 “Sixty percent of the jobs will require some form of post-secondary education or degree,” said Dr. Louis Levy, former interim president of Valdosta State University.

Now that student loans are so easily attained, kids who aren’t born with silver spoons in their mouths can get an education equal to the economic elite. However, there’s a catch. While student-loan companies, and even the United States government, are willing to fork over the dough so that you may complete your degree, you better be prepared to pay that money back and then some upon graduation.

While the deal sounds reasonably fair, it’s a catch 22.

Take this scenario: John Doe can’t find a good paying job that offers benefits without having a college degree. So, Doe takes out student loans so that he may obtain one. He graduates and yet, he is still having a difficult time finding a job because he is told that he is either overqualified or that the company/business is on a hiring freeze because of budget cuts.

Desperate for a job so that he may pay back his $24,000 student loan debt — which is the average college graduate debt according to a report from the Project on Student Debt — he takes a job that he could have attained without a degree. While some money is better than none, he still can’t afford his monthly loan payments and his loans soon become delinquent, which can occur after missing just one payment. Doe doesn’t pay for nine months which puts his loan into default.

Once in default, the full amount of the loan is due immediately, because obviously if one can’t make a $300 payment, certainly a $24,000 payment plus interest is completely logical.

Once a default occurs and the loan isn’t paid back, the government then can — and will — garnish Doe’s wages and seize tax refunds, Social Security and other federal benefit payments.

This “fictitious” story sounds dramatized, but sadly, this scenario is all too familiar to the nearly three in 10 of all college graduates whose student loans have a past-due balance of more than 30 days, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

There are four options for college graduates:

A. You have a “real job” lined up.

B. Look for a “real job”.

C. Get a random job.

D. Go to graduate school.

With the Labor Department reporting on June 29 that the unemployment rate was still at 8.2 percent, A, B and let’s face it, even C — those who have tried to find a part-time job in Valdosta can attest to this one — are a little unlikely. So, this leads many recent graduates to option D, grad school.

So why is grad school a good option? For one, it furthers your education and will open more doors for you as far as jobs are concerned. However, more importantly, going to grad school defers the student-loan payments you incurred as an undergraduate. This means that you will not have to pay back your initial student loans until you graduate with your master’s. Of course though, you will have to take out additional loans to go to grad school and upon receiving your master’s will be responsible for paying your initial loans and your new loans. The ability to pay these loans, as was the case with your undergraduate degree, is contingent on that you find a job. If that doesn’t work out, you are afforded an option E — get a doctorate.

Getting a college degree didn’t always leave a trail of misery. The “borrowing binge” can be dated back to the 1980s, when tuition for four-year colleges began to rise faster than the average family income, according to a New York Times article. Since 1990, enrollment at state colleges and universities has grown and some states, including Georgia, have cut spending for higher education and many others have not allocated enough money to keep up with growing enrollment.

The Georgia Legislature went from spending $2.1 billion for higher education in 2008 to $1.7 billion this year, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Despite cuts, the cost of tuition continues to increase. If this trend continues through 2016, the average cost of a public college will have more than doubled in just 15 years, according to the Department of Education.

Some may be reading this article and feel that because they didn’t go to college or because they have no student-loan debt that these problems don’t apply to them. However, the student-loan crisis affects each and every American, even those in Valdosta.

High student-loan balances discourage future and current demand for other products and services (such as buying a house for instance). This subtracts money flow from the economy to provide jobs in other areas. When more people have less money and buy less products, businesses will have to offset those losses with layoffs. This will cause more unemployment (which taxpayers contribute to the state assistance of those people) and more people in the already depleted job market looking for a job.

The “student-loan crisis” is much more than just a bunch of over-privileged young adults who feel entitled to jobs that are not “beneath them.”

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