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Generation debt
Generation debt
To pay for school, Tom Zakrzewicz has worked most weeknights, unloaded hundreds of trucks and will likely fight in a war.
Still, the University of Minnesota junior expects to graduate owing more than $25,000.
Zakrzewicz has held a job with UPS since his first day on campus. On top of his hourly wage, it provides $3,000 a year for tuition. He later joined the Army, adding another $5,000 a year.
But for his freshman year, he borrowed $15,000. "Really, right away, right out of the gates, I was digging a deep hole," said Zakrzewicz, who hopes to be a high school English teacher.
His predicament is becoming the rule, not the exception, on college campuses in Minnesota and across the country.
Student debt is soaring -- it has risen 157 percent in the state over the past decade -- as college costs advance at a rate far exceeding family income. Undergraduate tuition at the University of Minnesota, for example, has doubled this decade.
Next fall, for the first time in the University of Minnesota's history, students will shoulder more of the university's budget than the state will. As student borrowing swells, and state aid to campuses contracts, middle-class families are feeling the squeeze most.
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