Student Debt in the Americas

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...

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