When we read or hear stories in the news media these days about debt in higher education, we typically assume they are about the trillion dollars in student loans held by college graduates and their families.
But last week The New York Times put the spotlight on an often ignored angle to questions of debt in higher education: the amount of money owed by colleges and universities themselves.
“The pile of debt — $205 billion outstanding in 2011 at the colleges rated by Moody’s — comes at a time of increasing uncertainty in academia,” Andrew Martin of The Times wrote in a front-page story.
In some ways, the news is even worse. The Times only counted debt that is tracked by Moody’s, one of the big-three credit-rating agencies. Moody’s only rates the debt at a few hundred of the nation’s colleges, usually the ones that are in solid financial shape. Data from the Education Department paints a picture of more red ink for all of higher education: $277 billion, double what colleges held in debt in 2000.