As has been reported for several years, the middle class appears to be disappearing as more people fall into the other income brackets. Sadly, though, more people are sinking into the lower class than upper class, as what used to be good enough to be considered average is now not sufficient. Consider a few reasons that experts cite as the reason for a shrinking middle class.

In the past, a bachelor’s degree practically guaranteed that you could buy a house, raise a family, and live a fairly comfortable life since your job prospects were higher. Now, it is hard for people with this type of degree, or even a master’s degree, to get a job that pays well enough to feed a family. On average, people with a bachelor’s degree earn a few thousand dollars less than they would have two decades ago with the same education.

The end result is that people are losing the roof over their head via foreclosure, quickly becoming homeless if they cannot afford to move to a rental house and keep up those monthly payments. This is especially true of those who bought real estate assuming that their degree would ensure that they always had a job.

One of the most popular pieces of advice to solve this middle class issue is to make college more affordable. This is because so many people now graduate with huge student loans that they cannot pay off. When they lose their job and have both loan payments and a mortgage, there are few options for them to get out from under their staggering debt. Of course, this route may not be happening anytime soon as tuition continues to rise for many schools.