To what do I owe?

Just got back from two weeks in Hong Kong; got lots of stuff I want to write about, but been having trouble sitting down to do it.

So a brief shot before I get to the important stuff.

Was listening to NPR on my way in to work this morning; they were talking about a proposed government program to provide more accurate information to prospective college students. The idea is to get more accurate info than US News & World Report gets, plus make it a little bit less gameable.

That all sounded interesting, and useful (except, they said, graduation rates would be based on students who graduate w/in six years, rather than four or five).

But the reason I'm writing this is that, at the end, they stated that average student debt upon graduation is about $26k (I forget the exact figure). That does seem a little low to me (they could be adding in community college students, perhaps), although I don't know.

The bigger point is that they took that value and compared it to a car loan, saying that many people take out car loans for that much. True enough, but it isn't people just graduating from college (who may or may not have a job lined up) who are doing so, so I'm not sure of the value of the comparison.