Mar. 5--Margo Alpert is on the 30-year plan. Every month between $500 and $600 is automatically deducted from her salary to pay off college loans. By the time the 29-year-old Chicago public-interest lawyer is in her mid-50s and thinking seriously about retirement, she will finally be free of college debt.
"It's going to be part of my life forever," Alpert said. "I don't think about it at all because it's just a fact of life."
Alpert's experience with her version of debtors' prison is not unusual in the realm of recent college graduates whose unpaid loan and expense obligations have soared in the past several years, leaving them with debts that can range from double to more than triple their annual salaries.
Because of higher tuition, steady or declining grants and state aid, and a greater dependency on loans, the average student's debt has increased by more than 50 percent over the last decade, after accounting for inflation, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
