Some particularly interesting quotes follow.
On the media's penchant to create crises:
Average student loan debt:One college graduate had smashed a ceramic piggy bank, while another had adorned a life-size human statue with nothing but a silver ball and chain. A third drew a picture of a woman in a red coat stumbling down a seemingly endless pathway. The objects were all part of an art show last month in which graduates expressed fear and frustration over their student-loan debt.
The show joins a number of increasingly high-pitched campaigns aimed at exposing what some consider a national crisis: Student-loan borrowing that is threatening the financial future of today's college students. In January a lawyer with $100,000 in education debt started a Facebook campaign urging the federal government to "free us of our obligations to repay our out-of-control student loan debt." Forbes magazine published an article that same month called "The Great College Hoax," which said that the decision to borrow to attend college often amounts to a "financial disaster." A month later, a book came out decrying college debt, with the title The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History and How We Can Fight Back (Beacon Press).
Hype, hype, hype:In fact, despite stories of a large number of students who face gargantuan debt, about a third of graduates leave college with no debt at all for their education. Of the 65 percent who face debt, the average they owe is around $20,000. That's just below the starting price of a 2009 Ford Escape.
"Most people borrow a reasonable amount of money, they pay it back, and they are better for having gone to college," says Mr. McPherson.
But for a vocal minority of borrowers, problems with student-loan debt are very real. About 8 percent of undergraduates borrow at least double the national average.
Why do some students borrow more than $40,000 for a bachelor's degree when average borrowing is only half that? The answer is almost never that they are from very low-income families and need that much money to get a four-year degree. Public four-year colleges charged an average of just $6,585 for in-state tuition and fees in 2008-9. The total cost, including textbooks, room and board, and other living expenses, averages $18,326 a year — and financial aid brings that figure down for many students.
Graduate debt v. undergraduate debt:Students whom financial-aid experts call "overborrowers" capture most of the media's attention. "If you are a writer vying for a story on Page 1, which story do you want to write?" asks Mr. McPherson. "Is it going to be the careful story driven by the data, or is it going to be the headline that can scare people?"
He's talking about headlines like the one on a CNN report in 2006 that called student loans "A Life Sentence" and said: "Forget about getting married and buying a home. This generation is thinking about next month's payment."
But data on the average student-loan borrower tell a very different story. Figures compiled by the U.S. Education Department show that while roughly two-thirds of students graduated from four-year colleges in 2003-4 with some education debt, on average they borrowed $19,202. Those who attended public institutions graduated with an average debt of $17,277, and those from private colleges $21,957.
The data have been updated by the Project on Student Debt, a nonprofit research-and-policy organization, which found that for the Class of 2007, graduates' average debt was $18,482 at public colleges and $23,065 at private ones.
The dangers of for-profit schools (U of Phoenix, etc.):Part of the confusion over the student-loan issue is that undergraduate debt is frequently conflated with graduate and professional-school debt — which is typically much, much higher. In 2003-4, for example, medical-school graduates borrowed an average of $113,661. Student-aid experts say the higher debt makes sense for people who earn degrees in law, business, and medicine because they are much more capable of landing high-paying jobs and paying off larger loans.
Discuss.Heavy borrowers are not necessarily poor students who would have been forced to forgo higher education if they hadn't received extravagant sums. Rather, some students enroll in high-priced for-profit programs only to learn later that their certificates or degrees are not as useful on the job market as they had expected. Students who attend four-year programs at for-profit institutions borrow much more on average — about $28,138 each in 2003-4 — than students at nonprofit institutions do.

Dan