The Student Loan Debt Suicides

A friend reposted an article on Facebook today about the steady rise of cronyism and the subversion of meritocratic achievement in examination systems since those of the Chinese civil service and, while I’m not going to talk about that article as I don’t think it really hit the point, it did make me think about creeping credentialism and the demands on students today.

Then I ran across this piece from the Huffington Post:

Suicide is the dark side of the student lending crisis and, despite all the media attention to the issue of student loans, it’s been severely under-reported. I can’t ignore it though, because I’m an advocate for people who are struggling to pay their student loans, and I’ve been receiving suicidal comments for over two years and occasionally hearing reports of actual suicides. More people are being forced into untenable financial circumstances as outstanding student loan debt has surpassed $1 trillion.

I don’t want to editorialise this, but I thought some of you might be interested in this and may not have seen it yet. Ultimately, as educators, this is part of our environment and being aware of things like this is often useful.