Around 40% of outstanding federal student loan debt is now taken on post-college for master's and PhD programs. The average student debt balance among parents was more than $35,000 in 2018-19, up from around $5,000 in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, the private student loan market has grown more than 70% over the last decade, according to the Student Borrower Protection Center. Americans now owe more in private student loans than they do for past-due medical debt or payday loans. Every year millions of new students are pumped into the student loan system while current borrowers struggle to exit it.

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