(Originally posted at SparkAction)
How much is your student debt really worth? Young Invincibles has created an infographic, Student Debt In Perspective, helping you answer that question. Anyone who enters his or her student debt amount will be able to see how it compares to today’s national average and to the national average in 1990 (spoiler alert: students and graduates are dealing with a TON more debt now than ever before). You can also see how your debt number converts into various items like bananas or rolls of toilet paper. Or even down payments on a home.
So let’s get talking about student debt – on social media, with friends, to your local newspaper. This week is particularly important, with the clock is still ticking on the July 1st deadline for the subsidized Stafford Loan rate hike. Congress needs to take action to keep a key interest rate from doubling from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, which would lay a $1,000 hit on seven million students.
The real energy for this fight and the broader effort to reform the student loan system comes from everyone dealing with student debt—people who know that we need to keep education affordable to keep America competitive and equitable, current students and their families, and the almost forty million Americans with student debt.
So shout from the rooftops of Facebook and Twitter, tell the world how many rubber duckies of debt you owe and the change that you want to see. It is vitally important that we move the conversation about student debt away from our dinner tables and into the public conversation. Remember:
- Americans owe about $1 trillion dollars in debt
- Two out of three graduates today are leaving school with debt
- Each student borrower graduates with an average debt load of $25,250
- Average tuition at a four-year public school has shot up by 393 percent since 1980
- 1 out of 5 student borrowers has a delinquent balance
- As many as 47 percent of student borrowers are in deferral or forbearance
See your debt in perspective and start a conversation to build the momentum to fight back against debt.