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Student loans are mentally devastating

Ted Bauer
2 min readAug 16, 2022

In early 2015, I paid Installment №1 of my graduate school student loans. I hit “Submit” on that online form, basically muttered to myself “Here we go…,” realized it was probably another 30 years until I’d be totally done with it, and started silently weeping to myself about my future life and plans — especially since I didn’t even love graduate school that much, if we’re being honest. It’s now past the midway part of 2022. I still owe money.

I know a thing or two about “money problems and mental health” (which is another way of saying “I’m a human being”), and then there’s all this:

Pull-quote, you ask? Why yes.

It’s no surprise that the study found that using debt to finance a college education can take its toll. “Cumulative student loans were significantly and inversely associated with better psychological functioning,” according to the results. That means, generally speaking, student-loan debt was not great for the mental health of study participants.

But with tuition prices soaring — according to the study, the price of higher education in the U.S. has increased by 250 percent in the past three decades when accounting for inflation — most students have to borrow money to pay for…

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Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.

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