Is Student Debt Dangerous?

Andrew Rotherham is unconcerned by the growth of student loans:

What should worry us more than the national student debt load — which is still not well understood because the data are so murky — is the likelihood that particular categories of students are getting a bad deal. Students at for-profit schools, for instance, are incurring more debt and in many cases getting little or no value for their money.

These students tend to come from low-income families and returning military veterans and are the most likely of all college students — public, private, four-year, two-year — to default on their loans and torpedo their credit scores in the process. As a country, we need to do a better job of informing prospective students before they take on large debt loads at a certain school that other good — not to mention less costly — options are available.