Roughly 70% of America's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed high school seniors will go on to binge drink study at a 4-year college, but, to our complete shock, less than two-thirds of them will manage to graduate with a degree. Even worse, 30% of the students will drop-out after just one year on campus.
Not surprisingly, a survey conducted recently by LendEDU found that college dropouts still manage to rack up an average of nearly $14,000 worth of student debt during their brief college careers and a staggering number of them go on to default on that debt in very short order.
LendEDU polled 1,000 respondents that had dropped-out of a four-year higher education institution and also held some amount of student loan debt. We wanted to find out how much student loan debt they owed when the walked away from college.
Respondents were given the ability to enter in an exact dollar amount when asked how much student loan debt they held when they made the choice to drop-out of school. After averaging together all 1,000 responses, we found that when the average college dropout finally gave up on college, they owed $13,929.65 in student loan debt.
LendEDU pegs the average student loan debt per graduated borrower figure at $27,975, so the aforementioned debt per dropout amount makes good sense. Under the assumption that most dropouts leave campus by the end of their second year, the debt per dropout figure is nearly half of the four-year debt per borrower figure of $27,975. That figure cut in half would equal $13,987.50, a tick above our debt per dropout figure of $13,929.65.
Nearly half of college dropouts interviewed by LendEDU admitted they're not currently making payments.
Even worse, just over 35% of the students interviewed said they hadn't made a single payment toward their student loans since dropping out of college...
...all of which resulted in nearly 50% of respondents saying they're currently in default on their student loans.
Asked why they dropped out of college, roughly one-third of students cited "financial reasons"...financial reasons that presumably get much worse after they drop out of school and ruin their credit by defaulting on their student loans.
The plurality of college dropouts, 35.30 percent, cited "financial reasons" as the main reason for leaving their respective college campuses. Trailing closely behind was "social/family reasons," which brought in 34 percent of the vote.
After those two options, there was a significant drop-off. ?12.90 percent of poll participants selected "other," while 11 percent cited "health reasons," and 5.40 percent dropped-out because of "academic reasons." Finally, "legal reasons" was an answer option selected by only 1.40 percent of the respondents polled.
Digging further, we asked the 353 respondents that cited "financial reasons" as the main cause for dropping out this question: "More specifically, did you drop out of college because you didn't want to borrow more student loan debt?"
Around three-fourths (74.79 pecent) of this sub-section of college dropouts responded "yes" to the question found above. Meanwhile, 25.21 percent of those who dropped-out because of financial troubles maintained that student loan debt had nothing to do with their monetary woes.
Of course, despite their lack of success their first time around, nearly two-thirds of college dropouts say they're considering a second attempt at earning a college degree. Moreover, we're almost certain that their previous defaults will in no way hamper the appetite of banks that will be all too eager to throw even more taxpayer subsidized student loans at their "do-over" attempts...
About two-thirds, 64.30 percent, of the 1,000 college dropouts that participated in this poll intended on going back to college to finish up their degrees. Contrarily, 35.70 percent of the respondent poll stated they had no plans to enroll in classes again.
The fact that quite the clear majority of college dropouts with student debt are set on going back to colleges? speaks to both the regret in their original choices to drop-out and also the belief that a college degree will greatly aid in their ability to grow their future earning potentials.
...student loans that we're sure these dropouts will take despite reporting overwhelming "regret" for taking their initial round of loans.
Oh well, these students have to pay for those binge drinking trip to Cancun somehow...not going is simply not an option.