The Future of Student Loans (What they Might Look like in 20 Years):

I’ve ranted about student loans HERE. It’s not a big mystery….student loans are a money suck for millennials. They are crippling to our future and usually take 10+ years to full repay, while questioning if the debt was worth the price of the education.

Interest rates on student loans will probably climb in the next couple years as more debt is needed to finance the growing tuition bills.

Over at Nerdwallet, they looked at the potential long-term effects of the “student loan bubble” and they see some solutions on the horizon:

Since tuition costs continue to rise rapidly, lawmakers have offered ideas that would make the repayment process easier for students and would punish schools with high rates of student default on loans. Ideas on the table include the ability to easily refinance loans at lower interest rates, and to require schools with many defaulted loans to repay some of the default costs themselves. If these become reality, both initiatives would significantly impact the nation’s financial aid system over the long term.

This actually makes a lot of sense. If certain schools continue to have students default on their loans, clearly the school didn’t do a well enough job to prep the freshly-minted graduate with enough tools in his belt to make enough money with a good job.

Schools will then, instead of raising prices whenever they feel it (all the time), because they know most naive students will take out the loans and opt to kick the can down the road.

Problem is that road is an expensive one. One, right after graduation, will hit like a bag of bricks.

What’s Next? The Future of Student Loans — Nerdwallet