Graduate-School Debt Is Raising Questions About Degrees’ Worth

Great article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about rising debt loads for graduate students. Two highlights:

• The average amount of education-related debt that doctoral-degree recipients said they accrued in graduate school increased to $14,479 in 2012, a 70-percent increase from a decade earlier, according to National Science Foundation data.
• Three-quarters of master’s-degree recipients graduate with debt, with an average of $40,000, according to Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. About two-thirds of Ph.D. recipients accumulate debt, with an average of $60,000. The proportion of graduate students carrying undergraduate debt into graduate school, Ms. Stewart said, has doubled, to 40 percent, from the mid-1990s.