POSTPONING DEBT WITH DEBT. Debt-squeezed students consider graduate school as short-term fix.

More students took the Graduate Record Examinations in September than in any month in the last eight years, Educational Testing Service spokesman Mark McNutt said.

The increase in grad school interest comes as students are finding it harder to pay their high debt burdens.

Debt levels for seniors graduating from four-year schools have more than doubled from 1993 to 2007, from $9,250 to $20,098 on average, according to data from the Project on Student Debt, part of the nonprofit Institute for College Access and Success.

College graduates still earn more than those with only high-school degrees. But while the cost of college has risen 83% in the last decade, wages for college graduates haven't kept pace, growing 38%.

The return on investment becomes more negative for most of those graduate students.

Still, career counselors and financial aid experts wince at the notion of students going to graduate school purely to escape the job market or debt.

"In my experience, it's such a bad choice," said Laura Kestner, director of the career center at Marquette University. "When students come and talk to me about it, I try to talk them out of it. . . .  The worst thing a student can do is go to graduate school and take on more debt without having a direct intentional career goal."

Graduate school is a wise choice for students who know they need that degree for their dream jobs, Kestner said. But many go straight to graduate school only to find they have not increased their earning potential and still have no marketable work experience.

When the class of 2002 faced a tight labor market, for example, Kestner saw students flock to graduate school.

"After 2002-'03, we had so many overeducated, underexperienced job seekers," she said.

There are other ways to defer loan repayments, many of which provide the government with cheap labor.

Some counselors suggest other options. Certain public-service programs - such as AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, Teach for America or Volunteers in Service to America - provide stipends while the government defers and in some cases forgives portions of federal student loans. The government also offers some loan forgiveness for military service or for doctors, nurses or teachers working in high-need areas.

There's some profundity here about misuse of the public interest, but I'm too tired to think of it at the moment.