How the Great Recession fueled the student debt crisis

The geographic character of the Great Recession is, at this point, well-known. While everywhere in the United States experienced a sharp increase in unemployment, some areas suffered disproportionate exposure of local employment in harder-hit industries.

The Great Recession is also substantially at fault for the student debt crisis, and the geographic contours of the downturn carry implications for how student debt has subsequently been experienced throughout the country. The number of borrowers and average loan balances were increasing rapidly before the onset of the financial crisis, thanks to the defunding of public university systems following the previous cyclical downturn in the early 2000s. The Great Recession put those trends into overdrive: with fewer jobs available and a more selective labor market, many young people were funneled into a higher education system already in the process of becoming much more dependent on students and their families paying hefty tuition, as opposed to state support. Those who had entered the system seeking credentials to boost their chances in the labor market then graduated (or didn’t graduate) into a labor market still suffering from stagnant wages and disappearing job opportunities. Credentialization cascaded into higher loan balances as a share of income, rising delinquency, and eventually declining repayment rates.