More people are enrolling in schools, the price for admission is increasing, and a larger percentage of students are relying on student loans to finance their education.

While enrollment has already increased dramatically in the last five years, it is expected that by 2018, enrollment in four-year programs will increase another twelve percent, and enrollment in two-year programs will increase by another thirteen percent. As of now, there are already almost nine million students enrolled in four-year programs. This means that there will be over ten million within ten more years.

The average price for one semester of tuition is constantly increasing as well. Right now, the average cost for one year of tuition at a private university is $26,273, which is 4.4 percent higher than last year. The average cost of tuition at a public school is $7020, which is an increase of 6.5 percent from last year. Even the rates for two-year universities have increased 7.3 percent from last year to $2,544 a year.

A much larger percentage of enrolled students are relying on student loan debt to manage these costs as well. Last year, a staggering 60% of college students were using student loans. In addition, more shocking is the increase in overall debt balances that the average student is carrying. The average debt for all borrowers is up 18 percent to $22,700 from $19,300.

Federal loans and Federal student loan consolidation are not as readily available as they once were either. The problem is that the pool of people needed loans has increased at a much faster pace than the pool of funds available for loans. Compounding the effect of all of this is that federal lending has tightened up, due to the financial crisis. Federal Loan programs have not only tightened their lending guidelines, but also have an even smaller pool of funds to lend.

As a result, many borrowers are resorting to credit card debt as a supplement. In 2008, an unbelievable eighty four percent of undergraduate students had at least one credit card. This was an increase of seventy six percent from 2004! The average number of credit cards held has risen to 4.6 per student, and even more shocking, over half of all students have more than four individual credit cards.

Student loan debt has risen to record levels in the last few years. However, do not expect to see those levels decrease. In fact, all numbers point to the fact that the overall level of student debt will not only continue to rise, but so will overall student debt.