TRIPLED!! Or so you’d be led to believe if you were in the room at #WCET11 when Josh Jarrett of the Gates Foundation was speaking about High Quality Online Institutions that Scale. Apparently he said something that led to this tweet.
Alarming stats via Josh Jarrett. Stud loan debt > $3 trillion. We're locked in the iron triangle: cost, quality and access #wcet11—
Julie Kelleher (@jkelleher) October 27, 2011
Which was then re-tweeted. Then I saw it and tried to set the record straight (falling on deaf ears, no doubt), as follows:
How did student loan debt triple in the last week or two? It's 1 trillion – not 3. @christib @jkelleher #wcet11—
Barry Dahl (@barrydahl) October 27, 2011
So much misinformation about student loan debt size. Why is that? More re-tweeting of inaccurate info. bit.ly/pGAaD0 #wcet11—
Barry Dahl (@barrydahl) October 27, 2011
I learn a great deal from my Twitter network every day. But I also see a great deal of misinformation – mostly from the twitter feed at conferences.
For the record, student loan debt hasn’t yet topped the 1 trillion dollar mark – although it is expected to do so before the end of the year. The current (10/28/11) amount is $952+ billion, according the the Student Loan Debt Clock.
“Alarming stats” indeed! Alarming because they’re just not even close to the truth.
Filed under: Conference, Twitter Tagged: | WCET11
