SoFi Blog

It’s that time of year again, when the leaves change, the weather turns a bit colder and summer vacation seems like a distant memory. And if you graduated from college or an advanced degree program last spring, your student loan vacation is over, too.

More Americans than ever are taking out student loans to invest in their futures. And that’s leading to…a huge amount of debt across the nation. $1.3 trillion in fact. This year alone, college grads who have their bachelor’s degrees face an average of $37,000 in student debt. And, as of July, over seven million borrowers are in default.

So how to solve it all? Let’s start at the beginning. Scroll through the visual timeline below to see the highlights and lowlights of the past 80 years in student loan history.

Rest assured, there is definitely a light at the end of the tunnel (er…timeline).

Whether you’ve recently graduated from college or completed a master’s or professional degree, chances are good that you have student loans to repay.

When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently remarked that he was exploring financial aid options for his college-bound son, it was a sign of the times.

Refinancing student loans can be a great strategy for saving money when you’re done with school, but you can also take steps before even applying for loans that will pay off over the longterm.

However, getting accepted to an MBA program is challenging.  So much so that by the time graduate students are admitted to a program, many of them want to secure the first funding options available without pausing to thoroughly assess all the options.