Economic concerns
Long-term price trends make higher education an especially inflationary sector of the U.S. economy, with tuition increases in recent years sometimes outpacing even explosive health care sectors. These trends are sources of continuing controversy in the United States over costs of higher education and their potential for limiting the country's achievements in democracy, fairness and social justice.
Today, some companies offer tuition reimbursement to students.
Social concerns
Besides economic effects of rapidly increasing debt burdens placed on students, social ramifications are felt. One of these is the increase in suicides directly attributable to the stress related to distressed and defaulted student loans.