Michelle Singletary: On college decision day, don't sentence your child to decades of debt

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

63% : * Don't accept that student loans are "good debt."
58% : Even with income-based repayment plans that can reduce the monthly cost, borrowers still bemoan having to manage student loans with all the other monthly obligations that come with living on their own.
54% : Although focus group participants talked about their gratitude for getting a college education, they also shared their frustrations with paying back their student loans because - guess what - life got in the way.
50% : Go to pewtrusts.org and read: "Borrowers Discuss the Challenges of Student Loan Repayment."
49% : The problem with student loans is that the monthly payments don't start to make an impact on your budget until a future date.
44% : The average amount of student loans is just shy of $30,000.
41% : Lenders and the federal government make it too easy to overspend on a college education.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.