It’s a good question.
In a year of unprecedented austerity, the U.S. Education Department says it is facing an education deficit of $1.6 trillion.
It is the biggest of any major industrialized country, with students facing a whopping $1,400 per credit hour.
The U.K. has more than $1 trillion in deficits, with student debt climbing by almost $400 billion, according to a new study.
At the same time, student debt has fallen dramatically in some countries, with China and India having seen the largest drops in student debt.
So how is the U, S. and the world performing?
The answer is, as the Obama administration said last week, a lot worse.
A $1tn education deficit in just one year is a staggering achievement, but it is not surprising, according a report released Tuesday by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
That report looked at every U.N. education program, from U.G.P. scholarships and loans to free tuition to Pell Grants and federal Pell grants to Pell grants for students from low-income families.
Of the 47 U.C.L.A. programs, the report found, 47 had deficits last year.
The report did not count the $1 billion that the Obama White House pledged in a $1-trillion stimulus package in 2009.
Overall, the United States was the only industrialized country that did not make the cut in the report.
It ranked last among all OECD countries with a deficit, and last among OECD nations with the highest levels of student debt, with more than 400,000 students with student loans outstanding.
China ranked last in the OECD with a $4.2 trillion deficit last year, and in the U-K.
with $2.4 trillion.
The U-S.
ranked third behind only Japan and the United Kingdom, according the report, and second behind Japan only after Australia and Singapore.
The U.A.-Eur-U.K., which has about $2 trillion in student loan debt, had the highest number of students owing more than their parents.
More from NBC News:The U of A is a state school in the southeastern part of Alabama, and its graduates are among the top achievers in the country.
It’s home to some of the country’s top universities, including the University of Alabama.
It has also received federal grants and scholarships, such as the William H. Macy Scholarship.
When you add in that many of the students from that state also attended schools in the Southern states of Florida, Texas and Georgia, the students’ debts are staggering.
They are also among the wealthiest in the nation.
And they are among a growing number of young people with debt.
More than one-third of all U.D. students had outstanding student loans in 2015, according one study.
Nearly one in five U.E. students owes more than the average student in the United Arab Emirates, and more than a third of those students owed more than they have since graduating high school, according data compiled by the Education Debt Relief Coalition.
But for all the talk about student debt and poverty, students in the South still have a significant amount of debt.
About 18% of U.T. students have more than 30% of their household income in debt, according government data.
And one in three students in Florida has a debt of more than 60% of his or her household income.
What is clear is that student debt is not just a problem in the south.
Across the country, more than 70% of college graduates have student debt in some form.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, student loans are the third largest source of household debt after mortgages and student loan payments.
The number of Americans with student loan debts more than doubled in the past decade to about 2.7 million in 2019 from 1.5 million in 2007.
Many of those borrowers are struggling to repay their loans because of the economic downturn, but also because of student loan policies that disproportionately affect minorities and low- and moderate-income students.
If the U S. can find a way to pay down its student debt with tax revenue, that could be a win-win.
But the report also found that student loan rates have gone up, particularly in the first year of the Trump administration.
That is a result of a variety of factors.
First, students are saddled with massive student debt that they will have to repay in the years to come.
Second, many students with debt cannot afford to pay it off.
And third, the higher interest rates students pay on student loans make it difficult to repay the loans without defaulting on the debt.