Asked to judge whether the student loan crisis or North Korea poses a bigger problem to the United States, nearly 70 percent of millennials with student debt pointed to the loan crisis.
Stranger still, when asked to choose between the loan crisis and global warming, more respondents said the latter constitutes the bigger problem.
The questions were asked in separate polls of more than 500 millennials earlier this month on behalf of LendEDU, which sought to probe how members of the generation “thought the student loan debt crisis in the U.S. stacked up against other serious threats that the country will be dealing with in the coming years.”
When the survey asked “What is the bigger problem facing the United States?” and provided respondents with the options of North Korea or the “$1.4 trillion student loan crisis,” only 30 percent said North Korea posed a bigger problem, compared with nearly 70 percent who put the loan crisis on top.
That is puzzling enough, but it’s even stranger when juxtaposed with the results of LendEDU’s question asking respondents to choose between the loan crisis and global warming. Though only 30 percent said North Korea was a bigger problem than the loan crisis, more than 50 percent said global warming was the bigger problem.
Here’s a friendly reminder these students are in debt for an education that did not necessarily equip them to make sound political judgments, based on their answers to these questions.
It’s important to note the poll was taken before the death of American student Otto Warmbier, who many leaders such as Sen. Marco Rubio have said was murdered by North Korea. LendEDU estimates the margin of error to be just over four percentage points.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
