I’ve become cynical enough in this space that I thought nothing could surprise me. I was wrong. This is shocking:

Of the nearly $1.5 trillion in loans that US students have ever taken out on record, about $900 billion of it hasn’t been repaid. Yes, there are, according to the best estimate available, around some 60 million Americans walking around with student-loan balances. No, the numbers aren’t really so staggering because grads are slackers who never pay their debts; a third of all student loan debt was incurred in the last four years. So the national outstanding-loan debt is growing fast. Too bad for all us suckers who took out all that aid that the same cannot be said of the job market.

Is it possible that there is some sort of error of definition here, due to changes in how loans are managed in the last three years? 

If there is not, here is the world’s simplest stimulus plan — student loan holiday. 

Update: BTW, I am reading this as a third of all student loan debt ever taken on was issued in the last four years — the other interpretation, that one third of extant student loan debt was incurred in last four years would not be surprising, since student debt accumulates for the the first four to five years without payment, and then is paid off over a ten year period (usually).