When my oldest son, Alex, who identifies as nonbinary, was ready to apply to college in 2022, I felt ill-prepared to help him navigate the process. I grew up in a low-income household and was not prepared to figure out how to make my own college experience affordable.
I have been a single mother for 17 years. I have never made enough income to have to make payments on my student loans, which total $81,000 for two degrees. I figured I'd take the debt to the grave.
Alex is neurodivergent (his brain processes differently than what is considered typical for most people), so we looked for schools that focused on hands-on learning, where they would be more likely to succeed. We landed at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Implementation of the Western Undergraduate Exchange (an agreement between several public universities in the West) reduced annual out-of-state tuition costs from $29,000 to $13,000. But even after financial aid was applied, the remaining cost of attendance reached $15,500 per year.
Alex's financial aid package included $5,500 in federal student loans, the maximum freshmen can apply for. The rest was designated to me in the form of Parent PLUS loans, which allow parents to borrow money directly from the federal government. I was stunned. After completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, my expected family contribution was zero. How could the school and lender know I had no money and still approve me for $40,000 in debt over four years?
In researching Parent PLUS loans, I discovered that only the parent assumes the debt, there are fewer forgiveness options than other federal student loans, and the loans have a current interest rate of 8.05 percent. There was no way I could sign. I am a renter and until two years ago I did not have a retirement account. So instead of taking out Parent PLUS loans, I got a private loan with a much lower interest rate through my credit union. Although I had to co-sign, Alex was named primary borrower.
Alex understood that this was the only option to pay for college, but as they struggled to adjust to college life in the years after the pandemic began, the debt began to weigh on them. This led to them dropping out of college after two terms.
Although they have $7,000 in loans to pay for their short stint, Alex knew the implications of accumulating even more debt over the course of four years. He did everything he could to ease his concerns, but my own student loan debt was not reassuring. Alex believed that even with a minimum wage job, they could pay off their debt and still support themselves with jobs that didn't require a college degree.
Alex is not alone in this belief. Due to the combined costs of tuition and living expenses, some young people have chosen to delay, drop out, or forego attending college altogether to avoid student debt that could weigh on them for decades. A recent report from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit organization that provides educational reporting, showed that freshman enrollment declined 3.6 percent last fall, reversing recent gains. Additionally, the proportion of students who left university without a degree increased to 40.4 million in July 2021.
Although Americans question the value of college, research shows that people with college degrees typically earn nearly 75 percent more than those without. Jobs that require a degree also typically include a variety of benefits: flexible schedules, paid time off, and sick and parental leave.
But there is no clear path to those benefits. Michele Shepard, senior director of college affordability at the Institute for College Access & Success, said that while she still has faith in the value of a college degree, earning one is becoming increasingly inaccessible.
“If you just look at the amount of college costs that Pell Grants cover, they used to cover about 80 percent of the average cost of a four-year degree in the late 1970s, and now they cover 25 percent,” said Mrs. Shepard said.
Burned
For much of her life, Soleil Revell's mother, Reina Fernández, was a single mother, working multiple jobs and raising her children on a tight budget. When it came time for her to go to college, a small college in her hometown in New Mexico was the most affordable option. The state offers a scholarship that covers tuition and is available to state residents who enroll in college immediately after high school and who meet certain criteria. Ms. Revell took advantage of this option to attend New Mexico Highlands University and live at home to save money.
But when the pandemic hit, trying to keep up with online classes and the pressures of family life became too difficult for her. Ms. Revell lost her scholarship after her GPA dropped, leaving her owing $2,700 to the school. She dropped out after a year and a half and moved to Albuquerque in 2021, where she now works as a waitress full-time and works part-time creating social media posts for a car dealership. She said that, given the loss of the scholarship, she would have accumulated a debt of $20,000 if she had continued studying.
“At first I was very motivated to go to school, but after taking a break, I lost that drive,” Revell, 23, said. “My mom told me not to take a break because it was going to be a lot harder to come back, but I was really exhausted.”
In addition to her bills, Ms. Revell has some medical debt. She recently learned that a friend's employer is considering eliminating the degree requirement for potential new hires, so she plans to apply for herself. It's a work from home job that pays more than her current position. Revell said a remote position would allow him to get more jobs in social media.
His plan is to save enough to cover rent and tuition costs so that when he returns to school he can do so without going into debt. She hopes to study psychology at the University of New Mexico.
Sandy Baum, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute, says it can be difficult for students to return to college later if they dropped out.
“For adults, it's very clear that going back to college has a lot to do with unemployment,” Baum said. “But when the economy is strong, when employment is strong, then you just get a job.”
A military alternative
Maria Han, 20, has just entered the third year of her contract with the United States Navy. Due to an unstable home life, she moved in with a classmate when she was 16 years old. While in high school, Ms. Han enrolled in an accelerated program that would have helped her earn a basic degree in nursing when she graduated high school in 2021. But because she was separated from her parents, she did not have the resources to cover the $1,500 in program fees.
Instead, he became interested in joining the Navy as an option to pay for college when recruiters came to his school. Ms. Han is stationed in O'ahu, Hawaii, after spending two years training to become a fire controller. She says that through the Navy, she has multiple options to complete a college degree or receive training in a trade. One option is to cover the full cost of attending college by extending her contract for an additional five years. Another is to complete her current contract, which runs through 2027, and have her tuition costs covered by the GI Bill of Rights when her time is up.
At this point, Ms. Han does not believe she will extend her contract. “I feel like the educational part of the Navy gave me a false image of what was really going to happen,” she said. “Then I got on the boat I'm on now and it was a big reality check. “It's a little scarier than I thought it was going to be.”
For Ms. Han, confinement on the ship, coupled with limited connectivity with friends back home and a steep learning curve even after basic training, made the transition more challenging than she expected.
Still, Ms. Han says she doesn't know what she would have done without the Navy, and there are plenty of other people in her boat who feel the same way. “Some people became homeless and joined the Navy, which gave them a chance to start their lives again,” Ms. Han said.
Challenges and opportunities
There are few options for people who don't have enough income, savings or financial aid to pay for college, said Laura Perna, an expert on college affordability, access and success at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. “You can borrow what's available to borrow, or you can work longer hours for pay, and both of those things have different kinds of consequences,” she said.
While attending a community college is often touted as the easiest and most affordable option for those who cannot afford higher prices to go elsewhere, it is not always a solution, especially in places where there are no local options. Additionally, some four-year institutions do not accept credit from community college classes.
Perna believes free tuition programs are an important step toward reconsidering the costs of education and who is responsible for paying them.
“State governments have a role in funding public higher education through appropriations and financial aid,” Ms. Perna said. “The federal government has a role, especially through the Pell Grant. The government should play a role knowing that higher education has many public benefits in addition to the ways in which individual participants benefit. So I think I'm hopeful that we can rethink this somehow. Because higher education matters.”
Alex, my oldest son, is now 20 years old and works in ecological monitoring earning $15 an hour. It is a field that interests them and they see some limited paths to career advancement. But they don't see a clear path to financial security.
Part of this, no doubt, is because they saw me continue to struggle financially even after earning a master's degree. In Alex's opinion, if they are going to live paycheck to paycheck because of the debt they will have to pay to get a degree, they would prefer to avoid the debt and earn what they can without a degree.
They understand that this route will still leave them living with less means, but they prefer it to the one that carries the financial and mental burden of enormous student loan debt.
After so many years of watching me struggle, Alex finally got the chance to witness some relief: In December, my loans were finally forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. I don't know if the program will last or if Alex will ever need it, but I hope it is one of many solutions that could help make college more accessible for everyone.
