At What Age Do Most People Pay off Their Student Loans?

The average cost of a college education in America is nearly $60,000 USD, which for most people means that the student loans pile up as the professors pile on the classwork. But those bills aren't necessarily carried by the students alone -- as of 2017, U.S. citizens over age 60 owed about $67 billion in student loan debt, with most of it coming from helping to pay for their children's and grandchildren's educations. Since 2005, the number of such debtors has expanded exponentially, from approximately 700,000 in 2005 to 2.8 million in 2015. The trend correlates to the rapidly rising price for a bachelor's degree. In roughly the same time period, the average cost for a year of college rose to nearly $25,000, or roughly double what it was in 2000. One particularly troubling statistic is that the older debtors default on their student loans twice as frequently as those under age 50.

A little lesson about higher education:

• Stanford University in California is the most selective college in America, accepting only 5.69 percent of applicants each year.
• Henry Ford, Bill Gates, John D. Rockefeller, Michael Dell, and Abraham Lincoln have more than fame in common -- none of them graduated from college, either.
• Harvard University has the largest academic library in the world, with more than 20 million books, 10 million photos, and a staff of 800 workers.