Have you tried playing Tennis with your hands tied? How about trying to play tennis with your hands tied in the back?

I have not tried it but it must be pretty hard.

Should you still do it?

How about if you are forced to do it? Would that make it any easier?

Probably not.

Then why do we setup an infrastructure that is forcing people to do something similar?

The GROWING Student Debt

I read recently that the aggregate student loans just exceeded the aggregate credit card debt for the first time. The student loan figures are just shy of touching $1 Trillion and is growing at the rate of $2,853.88 per second.

The student loan clock sponsored by FinAid.org is moving fast.

The disclaimer is that it’s for entertainment purposes only brought a smile on my face. I wish the disclaimer was more like warning that’s on every cigarette pack – the numbers are pure-nighmarish if there is a word like that.

Why is this a problem?

Not so fast. The symptoms have not been defined fully yet. The statistics presented don’t tell the full story. Soon there’s going to be a trillion dollars of student debt and close to a trillion dollars of credit card debt. What we don’t know is that how many students who have a large student loan also carry a large credit card loan. I am thinking it is a significant number.

So, this would mean that most people entering the workforce have a “short-term” (credit card) problem and a “long-term” problem (student debt) to deal with. This is where the problem comes. Let me explain.

On one end, most education unfortunately does not provide enough capacity to make ons productive to a hiring organization.

On the other end, the longer it takes to become “really” productive the longer it takes to get out of debt.

Adding to this, one can get into a bigger trap too. By going and getting more “commodity” education, getting into deeper debt, trying harder to make it work and in the process keep going deeper into the vicious cycle.

The Big Question

We want our new workforce to be innovative, risk taking and entrepreneurial. Then, why are we creating a situation that will not lend them to be any one of those?

Please share with your network to raise awareness on the topic. This is important for all of our future.