More students from affluent families taking on loans for college

The L.A. Times reports:

Students from affluent families are taking out loans for college at twice the rate of two decades ago, making them the fasting-growing borrower group.

Fifty percent of graduates in the class of 2012 whose parents had incomes of more than $125,700 left college with loans, up from 24% about 20 years earlier, according to a study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. For graduates whose parental income was below $44,000, the rate rose to 77% from 67%.

"Across the spectrum, student debt has become an important way to pay for college, and even graduates from well-off families rely on debt," said Richard Fry, an economist and primary author of the study.

The $1.2 trillion in outstanding education loans, which topped U.S. credit-card debt in 2010, continues to rise. So does the amount that students carry when leaving school. Graduates of the class of 2012 who took loans for a bachelor's degree owed $29,400 on average, up from $23,450 in 2008, according to the nonprofit Institute for College Access & Success in Oakland.

Don't our "progressive" universities care about students? What about the children?