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Student Debt in the Americas

By Carolina Ramírez

A threat to the region's middle class?

The promise of upward mobility for Latin America’s new middle classes has led to swelling university enrollment rates, but also to growing debt.1

In Colombia, high school graduates enrolling in higher education rose from 24.87 percent in 2002 to 45.02 percent in 2012.2 Meanwhile, in 2011, 23 percent of 25- to 34-year-old Mexicans had attained a university education, compared to only 12 percent of 55- to 64-year-olds.3

The increased demand has strained the region’s highly competitive public education institutions,4 while at the same...

Read this article on the Americas Quarterly website. | Subscribe to AQ.

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