Just in case you forgot, student loan debt in America now tops one trillion dollars and there’s no end in sight.

Adam B. Wolf of the Los Angeles Times writes.

Heading for the student debt cliff

Cable news channels regularly stoke their viewers’ fears about China holding $1.1 trillion of U.S. debt. But they’re focused on the wrong $1.1 trillion of loans.

The borrowers of this other $1.1-trillion debt are far more likely to default on their obligations: students, particularly those who went to for-profit colleges. The global consequences could be — and likely will be — staggering.

More than 38 million Americans have student loans outstanding. To put this in perspective, 38 million is the combined population of New York and Florida. And this collective debt is on par with the entire GDP of Mexico.

After a for-profit culinary college in California settled a lawsuit brought by former students, I was hired by a fund created through the settlement to provide assistance to those who took out loans to attend the school. The job has put me on the front lines of the student debt crisis.

The students who enrolled at the culinary school were hoping to become the next Tom Colicchio, and they routinely took out $40,000 loans to finance their educations.

The federal government issued some of the loans to the students, but those covered only a portion of the school’s tuition and costs. Sallie Mae, the now-private lender, made up the difference, dispensing loans to students like Halloween candy. But there was a catch: Whereas the federal government’s loans had interest rates of about 6%, the interest rates on the private loans often hovered between 13% and 18%.

The financial consequences of financing a culinary education with credit card interest rates are devastating — and predictable. The school’s graduates who find work in their field typically earn about $9 per hour. And those are the lucky ones who are employed.