F) Promotional literature for colleges andstudent loans often speaks of debt as an “investment inyourself.” But an investment is supposed to generate income to pay off theloans. More than half of all recent graduates are unemployed or in jobs that donot require a degree, and the amount of student-loan debt carried by householdshas more than quintupled since 1999. These graduates were told that a diplomawas all they needed to succeed, but it won’t even get them outof the spare bedroom at Mom and Dad’s. For many, themost tangible result of their four years is the loan payments, which nowaverage hundreds of dollars a month on loan balances in the tens of thousands.
Passage Two
