The DOI matches its Crossref record; 50 of the 135 references it cites were found in a registry or an index, and 85 are not checked yet.
Student Loans: Do College Students Borrow Too Much—Or Not Enough?
Open accessAbstract
Total student loan debt rose to over $800 billion in June 2010, overtaking total credit card debt outstanding for the first time. By the time this article sees print, the continually updated Student Loan Debt Clock will show an accumulated total of roughly $1 trillion. Borrowing to finance educational expenditures has been increasing—more than quadrupling in real dollars since the early 1990s. The sheer magnitude of these figures has led to increased public commentary on the level of student borrowing. We move the discussion of student loans away from anecdote by establishing a framework for considering the use of student loans in the optimal financing of collegiate investments. From a financial perspective, enrolling in college is equivalent to signing up for a lottery with large expected gains—indeed, the figures presented here suggest that college is, on average, a better investment today than it was a generation ago—but it is also a lottery with significant probabilities of both larger positive, and smaller or even negative, returns. We look to available—albeit limited—evidence to assess which types of students are likely to be borrowing too much or too little.
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Cites
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Cited by
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Skills, education, and the rise of earnings inequality among the “other 99 percent”
Autor, D. H. (2014) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1251868 · Cited by 1,160
Priceless: The Nonpecuniary Benefits of Schooling
Oreopoulos, P., & Salvanes, K. G. (2011) · Journal of Economic Perspectives · doi:10.1257/jep.25.1.159 · Cited by 963
The nature of credit constraints and human capital
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Metadata
- Authors
- Avery, C., & Turner, S.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- University of Virginia (US)
- ORCID
- Avery, Christopher
- Venue
- Journal of Economic Perspectives
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2012-02-01
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 165-192
- ISSN
- 0895-3309 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2080973810
- Cited by
- 385
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 32 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 53 · 2016: 28 · 2015: 53 · 2014: 33 · 2013: 15 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 164.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Journal of Economic Perspectives (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education Research Studies
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Finance › Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Politics, Economics, and Education Policy
- Keywords
- student loans, student debt, college financing, educational investment, credit card debt, student borrowing behavior, college enrollment
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