Case study: Heres an interesting headline news article for class discussion during this seminar week. The article is about the financial burden of student loan debt on college graduates. Debt financing is not the only source of financing a college education, but it is an important source of financing for many college students. Fewer students would go to college without access to debt financing. Some students need more college loan financing than others, because the cost of their college education is higher than it is for other students and/or they have less access to alternative financing methods. An unaffordable college loan debt burden is financially inefficient (i.e., not best) for any college graduate. Some graduates are able to afford bigger debt service payments than others. The interest rate cost of debt financing is lower for some students than for others. Some students qualify for government subsidized student loans; while others dont. Some students qualify for a tax credit for college tuition or tax deduction for the interest they pay on college loans; while others dont. Some college graduates get a better paying job after college than others, making their debt payments more affordable. For U.S. government-provided loans, the government offers a variety of repayment plans to make it easier for college graduates to repay their college loans. The pain and big payoff of student loan debt Wednesday, 14 May 2014 | 12:00 PM ET A record high number of American households have student loan debt and those households have far more debt overall than college grads without student loan debt. But as CNBC's Allison Linn reports, it still pays to go college. Younger Americans who are still paying off student loans have a lot less moneyand a lot more overall debtthan those who don't have any student loans, a new report finds. It's not clear why, but the report from Pew Research Center said one possible explanation is that people paying off hefty student loans have trouble gaining financial footing because they are bogged down by those college bills. Another possibility is that, as more people go to college, the wealth gap between those who borrow for college and those who don't is widening. Read MoreSavings showdown: Retirement or college tuition? The Pew report found that nearly 4 in 10 households headed by a person under 40 has some student loan debt, a record high. The median student loan debt for that group was about $13,000. The difference between those households and the ones with no student loan debt was striking. Read MoreFor many, credit card debt outweighs savings Among college graduates, the report found that younger households with student loan debt had a median net worth of $8,700. For college grads without student loans to worry about, median net worth was $64,700. The college graduates with student loan debt also had nearly twice as much overall debt as those without student loans. The median total debt for those younger households was $137,010, compared with $73,250 for those without student loans. Total debt include things such as mortgages, car loans and credit card debt. The Pew analysis was based on the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances, a detailed look at Americans' financial well-being. It did offer one bright spot for those burdened by student loan debt: They are making a lot more money than those who didn't get a college degree at all. Read MoreMillennials' best bet: Mom and dad's basement The Pew researchers found that the typical household income of college-educated households with student loan debt was $57,941, compared with $32,528 for those headed by someone without a bachelor's degree. That's in keeping with other Pew research showing that despite the costs, it pays to go to college perhaps more than ever. By CNBC's Allison Linn.

Do you think too many students inefficiently have an unaffordable level of college loan debt? Explain.