Not knowing anything about the respondents casts doubt on a survey finding that more than one in five college students tap educational loans to invest in cryptocurrency, said Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall U.D-Keine, iStock
If you wanted to get mad or guffaw about the way college students are spending their money, this survey is for you.
The website “The Student Loan Report” conducted a survey that found a little more than one in five students use extra money from their student loans to invest in cryptocurrency. “More than one-fifth of college students are dipping their toes, or maybe diving in head-first, in the virtual currency space, and they are using their student loans to do it,” reads an article that Student Loan Report published about its survey.
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Not knowing anything about the respondents casts doubt on a survey finding that more than one in five college students tap educational loans to invest in cryptocurrency, said Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall U.D-Keine, iStock
If you wanted to get mad or guffaw about the way college students are spending their money, this survey is for you.
The website “The Student Loan Report” conducted a survey that found a little more than one in five students use extra money from their student loans to invest in cryptocurrency. “More than one-fifth of college students are dipping their toes, or maybe diving in head-first, in the virtual currency space, and they are using their student loans to do it,” reads an article that Student Loan Report published about its survey.
Stories of people buying virtual currency for a low price and then selling high have sparked widespread interest in, and skepticism about, currencies like Bitcoin, the value of which has fluctuated widely in recent months.
Student Loan Report heavily implies through its survey’s findings that investing in cryptocurrency is a foolhardy endeavor. “Could they have used, spent, or even saved, this money more prudently?” the story reads. “Absolutely. A perfect example would be stowing that money away in a high-yield savings account that they could later use to chip away at their student debt.”
But the methodology of the survey is highly suspect, said Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University. The survey purported to have asked a thousand college students, “Have you ever used student loan money to invest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?” and found that 21.2 percent of them answered yes. (The polling firm Morning Consult found in a December survey that nearly 75 percent of adults had never used Bitcoin.)
Not knowing anything about the respondents casts doubt on the finding, Kelchen said. “We have no idea if they even actually have student loans because people aren’t always truthful on these online surveys,” he said. “It’s a challenge when you have absolutely no idea who is doing this.”
A thousand people might seem like a good sample size as well, but Kelchen said that doesn’t erase questions about the origins of the data. “Just because you have a large sample doesn’t mean it’s representative,” he said. “It’s like pulling a thousand people out of Yankee Stadium and asking them what they think of the Red Sox. You would have a big sample, but it’s not nationally representative or even close.”
The survey was administered by the polling group Pollfish, over four days in March, according to the article’s methodology section. Drew Cloud is listed as the author of the article and the founder of The Student Loan Report, according to his biography on the website. No one at the website immediately responded to requests for comment on the survey.
The survey’s chief finding has been reported by, among others, Fox News, CNBC, and Inside Higher Ed, which reported that Cloud “created the site as a news source for borrowers after struggling to repay his own student loans.” He also told the news source that he was surprised students were capable of spending their loans to purchase virtual currency.
Chris Quintana was a breaking-news reporter for The Chronicle. He graduated from the University of New Mexico with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing.
