Computer-Assisted Reporting, Fall 2014
The Price of Post-College Student Loans
View interactive component on Tableau Public here.
November 20, 2014
The price of graduating college with student loans may mean post-college life includes leaky windows, a cockroach-infested apartment, sleeping on the floor and the lack of a washer, dryer and dishwasher.
But Bekah (Cvetich) Schouten, a 2012 Cedarville University graduate, said a current college student does not consider these things, which she’s had to endure post-college. “It’s not just like, ‘I can’t buy cute shoes that I want to buy.’ (It’s) like, ‘Oh, I have to live with cockroaches. I have to live without a dishwasher,’” Schouten said. “Oh gosh, I think there’s a special circle in Hell where everybody has to live without dishwashers.” As she’s discovered, there’s some degree of sacrifice required for those stuck repaying student loans and even a greater sacrifice required when paying a spouse’s debt, which was added when Schouten married. “There was a time when our meals were like rice and spaghetti sauce, and that’s what we could afford and we, you know, just kept trucking along,” she said. The student loan debt Schouten was working to repay was multiplied one and a half times when she got married one year and one month after graduating from college. “We could not afford a very nice apartment for a very long time,” she said. “We also didn’t even have a bedframe. We slept right on a mattress on the floor. We were in a small apartment that was — oh gosh, it was gross.” Schouten’s husband had accumulated debt from the two years he spent at two different colleges before their marriage, and she had accumulated debt from her four years at Cedarville. “You’re not only paying for your own debt, but for somebody else’s, so it’s kind of just stressful,” Schouten said of marriage’s magnification of the debt. Adam Carroll, founder of National Financial Educators, said the national average for student loan debt facing college graduates is just under $30,000, meaning that the average monthly payment is between $250 and $300, depending upon the interest rate and the payment plan chosen. But, he said he’s seen monthly payments as high as $1,200 for grads that have borrowed beyond reason or failed to plan ahead. Schouten said her student loans amounted to about $20,000 at the time of graduation. According to data from the Institute for College Access and Success’ CollegeInsight division, Schouten’s student loan debt is less than the estimated average debt of $28,251 for a 2012 Cedarville graduate. While, according to CollegeInsight, tuition costs across the board are steadily rising, Carroll said student loans can be misused. That is, students may borrow more than what’s necessary. “I think that some students use student loans as a way to lend a higher lifestyle,” he said. “I think some of the best advice I could give is make sure that you’re only borrowing what you absolutely need and that you’re figuring out other ways of obtaining money, whether that’s scholarships or grants, (or) work-study.” Plain and simple, four-year college graduates must pinch pennies anyway they can, whether during college or afterward, married or unmarried, to repay student loans. “At some point, you have to live as a broke college kid,” said Adam Carroll, founder of National Financial Educators. “So you’ll either do it when you’re in college or you’ll do it when you’re a professional.” Nearly two-thirds of students from private, four-or-more-year schools in the nation graduated with student loan debt in 2013, according to the most recent data from CollegeInsight. A greater number of Ohio students graduated with student loan debt than what was expected from the national average. Seventy-four percent of 2013 |
private college graduates in Ohio walked across the stage with some amount of student loan debt.
While public college grads are less likely to have to deal with student loan debt, 60 percent of public college grads across the nation still graduated with debt in 2013. This is less than Ohio’s 65 percent of 2013 public college grads that graduated with student loan debt. Carroll said one of every four of last year’s college graduates in the nation is unemployed or underemployed one year later. Waiting for that perfect job is often not the best strategy to make a college degree worthwhile. “Go after the job that you want, but if that’s not coming to you, definitely get a job and get some experience and start paying those loans down,” Carroll said, “because the longer you go, obviously, without paying, the higher the interest begins to accrue.” Schouten said she took a short-term job she didn’t really like at Applebee’s Restaurant shortly after graduation just so that she could begin repaying her loans. “You have debt right from the start, and you have to pay for it, so you just got to take what (job) you can get,” said Schouten, a journalism graduate who has worked as a proofreader for a real-estate company and a production editor at a publishing company since her stint at Applebee’s. And the greater the debt, the greater the hold that’s put on life’s events. “That (debt) has really held back our young people from being able to begin their lives and start making those important investments early in life — things like: starting a family, getting married, buying a house,” said Colin Seeberger, press secretary for Young Invincibles. Young Invincibles is a national organization focused on representing the interests of 18-34 year olds and educating this generation on important issues, such as education and healthcare. “Those really important investments early on in life are really getting put on hold because of student loan debt," Seeberger said. Schouten is still paying her own debt, which has accrued to about $27,000 because of interest, and the debt of her husband, who is still finishing his degree. She said student loan debt lurks behind the great promises and dreams of conquering the world upon graduation. “You get all excited about all the great things that are going to happen as soon as you graduate, and you kind of have to build from the bottom up with all that debt on your shoulders,” Schouten said. And Carroll said for most students, there’s no escaping this burden. He explained there’s no consumer protection in which the unmanageable amount borrowed via student loans, if not paid, can be forgotten. “There’s no protection for that person once they get out of college, so the debt is theirs no matter what,” Carroll said. “There’s no bankrupting it; there’s no foreclosing it; it will follow them forever.” Schouten said the only way to handle this debt responsibly is to set a budget and stick to it. A graduate cannot afford to put off repaying student loans, because the interest rate increases the debt rapidly. “Set up a good budget and make sure that that (student loan payment) is central and it cannot move,” Schouten said. “Like you can move other stuff around and spend less on food or whatever, but you have to pay those debts, so whatever income you have, you have to work around that.” Still, with a budget — or perhaps magnified by it — student loan repayments affect a graduate’s daily life. “It affects the way you live day-to-day, what you’re going to eat,” Schouten said. “It’s going to take a toll on you, and I mean, you’ll get through it, but it’s not going to be easy.” |
A 2012 Private College Grad's Budget
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The National Association of Colleges and Employers estimates the starting salary for a 2012 bachelor’s graduate to be $44,482. This is a monthly income of about $3,706.83.
A student with the national average of private-college debt ($29,309 in 2012) pays $319, or 8.61 percent of their income, to repay student loans each month. Other monthly expenses include food, housing and transportation, which are broken up into segments according to a September 2014 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. |
Field Reporting, Fall 2014
As Semester Ends, Cedarville Students Talk Finals Week
Published at readcedars.com on December 4, 2014
Students React to SSC Christmas Wonderland (co-created with Lauren Eissler)
Published at readcedars.com on November 22, 2014
Busking Adds Music to Yellow Springs, Ohio (co-created with Lauren Eissler)
Published at readcedars.com on November 9, 2014
Cedarville FestiFall Celebration
Published at readcedars.com on October 24, 2014
Wind, Rain and Cardboard Makes Canoe Race a Challenge for Students
Published at readcedars.com on October 3, 2014
Bonfire is a good choice for Cedarville class event
September 27, 2014
The junior class council held a bonfire Saturday night to give the class a casual setting in which they could get to know one another and the class officers.
“We like to do, you know, at least one intro event that’s relatively small just for fun,” said R. J. Kelly, treasurer of the junior class. The event held from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. included music, a campfire, all the fixings for s’mores making, hot apple cider and a few games. Class Vice President Ali Logan said, “We were trying to figure out what to do to kind of, I don’t know, get our faces out there, but we don’t want to be the center of it for sure, so just to like let people know who we are and have just a chill first event to kind of kick off the class council year.” Logan said the council bought enough chocolate, graham crackers and marshmallows to make 250 to 300 s’mores, but she said she estimated about half of that would be left over. Kelly said he expected a larger portion of the junior class to come out for the |
bonfire, but he said there wasn’t a lot of advertising for the event.
“We didn’t advertise as well as we wanted to, but the number turn out is pretty good,” Kelly said. “I think there’s about 70 people and we still have an hour left.” Junior Jessica Ward said she hopes the junior class will do a similar casual spring event, since the bonfire came at the perfect time in the semester. Ward said she likes having such events once a semester. A bonfire was a good choice for the first event of the semester, said junior Vineeta Rao. “I think it’s a good class event for juniors, because we don’t want to play a lot of games,” Rao said. “We just want to like eat food and hang out with people.” Other junior class events for the semester include junior-led chapel, the annual Downpour music event and a fundraising event for Young Life. |