America’s student loan debt crisis may be about to get much worse amid rising tuition and borrowing costs. Student loans are the only consumer debt segment with continuous cumulative growth since the Great Recession, with an almost 157 percent surge over the last 11 years. By comparison, auto loan debt has grown 52 percent, while mortgage and credit card debt actually fell by about 1 percent, according to Federal Reserve and Equifax data compiled by Bloomberg. All told, there’s a whopping $1.5 trillion in student loans out there, marking the second largest household debt segment in the country, after mortgages.
