BY WILLIAM FEOLA
When Jessica Bryan entered Bergen Community College more than three years ago, she wanted to be just like the rest of her graduating high school class. She was ready to study for two years, get her associate degree in psychology and move on to a four-year university where she could receive her bachelor’s degree and get started with the life she had planned and dreamed of for so long.
Like many other students who aren’t financially able to pay for tuition and books out of pocket due to extremely high costs, Bryan took advantage of financial aid and was on her way to achieving her goals and dreams. Her grades were high, she was inducted into the Phi Theta Kappa honor society; she had a stable job as a nanny which allowed her to keep up with her credit cards and bills.
What Bryan didn’t realize was that the financial aid and stable financial situation was about to come to a screeching halt. After a solid first year of college, financial aid stopped covering for several expenses. She had to pay for school, books and other supplies out of her savings. The cost of living and college caused her to fall into thousands of dollars in debt.
“I have a car payment, car insurance and medical bills to pay for,” said Bryan. “My total debt is at about $2,000 and once I graduate Bergen Community College I expect to have $12,000 in student loans alone that I’m going to have to repay eventually.”
Bryan represents a significant number of students in the United States who are currently in college and are already facing thousands of dollars in debt once they graduate. Americans owe more than $1.48 trillion, which is spread out among 44 million borrowers, which on average comes to $33,636 per student.
A college degree is clearly a great lifetime investment, but the unfortunate reward for many students is a financial burden that many have to deal with for the rest of their lives.
[Watch Jessica Bryan talk about her everyday routine as a full-time nanny while going to school at Bergen Community College.]
The statistics
The student loan debt crisis here in the United States has resulted in little to no relief to help students lower their costs or their debt. In fact, things are getting worse. According to LendEDU, an online marketplace for student loan refinancing. An estimated 60 percent of college graduates in 2016 graduated with debt, up 15 percent from 1992-1993 when 45 percent of students borrowed money.
The debt crisis has affected young Americans lifestyle and way of life, mainly because they have to shoulder a much bigger financial burden than their parents had to, according to a chart done by the Financial Times.
In a study done by PBS NewsHour, almost 30 percent of graduates move back in with their parents after graduation because of their debt while 63 percent of the buyers have put off buying a home because they can’t afford it. 73 percent of borrowers have delayed saving for retirement, 47 percent of buyers have delayed buying a car and 28% of borrowers have delayed getting married because of their debt. The enormous amounts of debt affects every portion of their lives and it has had a profound affect on many older Americans.
When combined, undergraduate and graduate debt for a master of education degree is $50,879, a master of science is $50,400, a law degree is $140,616 and a degree in medical and health sciences is $161,772. These degrees make up 43 percent of students and generates colleges millions, even billions of dollars, according to a study done by LendEDU.
From the class of 2015, New Hampshire had the highest average student loan debt per student, coming in at $36,101 per person. Utah had the lowest at $18,873 per student and New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan are among the highest in student loan per capita in the nation, according to Forbes.
In the same Forbes study, it showed that he student loan default rate is 11.5 percent, the student loan delinquency rate is 5.41 percent and the highest number of borrowers, 12 million students, took out loans in the range of $10,000-$25,000 while the second highest, eight million, took out between $25,000-$50,000.
Race, gender gap
Of course, not every student faces an equal amount of debt, but some are sunk in a much deeper hole than others. African-American students are much more likely than their Caucasian or Latino counterparts to leave school with debt and it’s not even close, according to Time Magazine. This chart done by The Atlantic Magazine shows just that.
Black and low-income students are much more likely to borrow money to receive either a bachelor’s or associate degree than their peers and the dropout rates for African-American students who take out loans, 39 percent, is the highest for any group.
African-American students also default at a much higher rate than any other race group, according to the LA Times. The default rate of black students, which is 49 percent, is more than twice that of white students, 20 percent, and more than four times the rate of Asians, who default at a rate of 11 percent. When these students dropped out of college, 65 percent of African-Americans defaulted compared to only 38 percent of white students and those who earned degrees also had a disparity, with 23 percent of black students defaulting compared to only 6 percent of white students.
The problem isn’t the students or loans, it’s the fact that black Americans have fewer opportunities to make college more affordable and because they have such an enormous debt to pay back, they have much more different career paths, according to Newsweek.
When it comes down to male and female, women have topped men in terms of higher education but that has come at a hefty price. While having higher graduation rates and higher enrollment when compared to their male counterparts, women carry nearly two-thirds of the country’s student debt, which comes out to nearly $933 million, whereas men only have $467 million in debt.
The reason for women having more debt than men is simply because they outnumber men in college these days and are more likely to pursue a graduate degree, according to CNBC.com, and because of that, they end up with the bigger loan balances.
Experts voice their opinions
Rajeev V. Date, the deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is the federal watchdog created after the financial crisis to ensure that banks, lenders and other financial companies treat you fairly, gave a cryptic warning to students about loans and the future.
“If one is not thinking about where this is headed over the next two or three years, then you are completely missing the warning signs,” Date told the New York Times. He even went as far as to compare student borrowing to risky mortgages.
Other experts, like lawyer Adam Minsky of Boston Student Loan Lawyer, had some advice for college kids who feel like they’ll never repay their debt or get out of the hole they are in.
“Make sure you know what your balances, interest rates, and monthly payments are, and when your grace period ends,” said Minsky on the webite Student Loan Hero. “It’s all well and good to be ready to make payments on your student loans, but you must know all of these details to avoid financial trouble.”
“Make sure all of your loan servicers have updated contact info for you,” said Minsky. “You don’t want any of your student loans to fall through the cracks because your servicer can’t find you.”
Kathleen Shannon, an adjunct professor at Ramapo College who helped set up a debt repayment option presentation for students, offered up some excellent insight into programs that could relieve debt for some students.
“There are programs that most people don’t know about that enable them to potentially lower their monthly payments and have the loan discharged entirely after 10-25 years of on-time payments,” said Shannon. “Public Service Loan Forgiveness is an option where someone who works full-time of at least 30 hours per week in public service and makes 10 years of 120 on-time payments total can have their remaining debt forgiven.”
She said that information about the other programs could be found at the Department of Education’s website about Income-Driven Plans, which can be found here.
Local focus
Locally here at Ramapo College, freshman looking to take out four years worth of loans, not including room and board, food plans, etc. will accumulate a student debt of nearly $30,000 and are looking at much more if they want to live on campus and take advantage of the plans Ramapo has to offer.
Katherine O’Connell, a sophomore at Ramapo majoring in communication, had to move back home after her freshman year and commute because the student loans just for the room and board were too much for her to handle. She was taking out loans of nearly $12,000 just to be able live on campus.
“My family was able to pay part of my tuition so the loans I was taking out just for my tuition wouldn’t have put me in terrible shape in the future,” said O’Connell, 19. “The room and board loans, however, would’ve been too much for me to handle financially in the future so I made the decision to commute because it was cheaper. Plain and simple.”
Students like Michael Gallo, a senior majoring in mathematics, locally at Misericordia University, have felt the weight of the student loan debt on his shoulders as his graduation date gets closer and closer.
“I became a resident assistant at my school because it took off a good chunk of my tuition and I still have a massive amount of debt to pay off when I get out of college,” said Gallo, 22. “I feel like as if no matter what I do, I can’t escape it and I know I have a hefty bill waiting for me after graduation.”
For many students like Bryan, who works full-time and goes to school full-time just to try to make ends meet, they cannot enjoy the college life, or life itself, because they are too stressed trying to make sure they can survive now while planning ahead for the future. She earns an average of $13.50 an hour as a full-time nanny.
“Student tuition and loans are so ridiculously high nowadays,” said Bryan. “Nobody can afford to go to school anymore and if you cannot afford to go to school to get a well-paying career than you really cannot get ahead in life. I really wish I knew what to expect and what I would be going through because if I could do it all over again I most certainly would.”
Related Links:
http://time.com/topic/campus-sexual-assault/
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/20/us/national-school-walkout/index.html
Really great thorough article bi;;y! I knew that student loan was a huge ongoing crisis in America but i had no idea it was this extreme, great job on making the reader (myself) feel emotional about the crisis with great facts and quotes. Great chart and video, maybe add an audio of someone you may Know to add a little more to the story.