Aaron Barazza is a senior at the University of Colorado Boulder majoring in biochemistry. The out- of- state student from Roswell, New Mexico, hopes to do research after graduation in 2020.
Briannah Hill is a Colorado native from the neighborhood of Stapleton. She is an ethnic studies major with a minor in evolutionary biology. Hill will graduate this spring.
Mary Guenther is from Spokane, Washington. Last spring she graduated with her masters in education from CU. Currently, she works as an academic advisor in the business school.
All three have their own academic journey, but their experience contains one common thread, and it is something that binds many students together: the amount of debt they accumulate when they pay for school.
In 1979, someone could pay off one year of college tuition in a summer. The price of education has increased by 1300 percent since the 1970s, and the cost is going to keep rising. Today, 30 percent of the people who attend college have the ability to pay for it out of pocket.
However, the other 70 percent have to finance their education in other ways. Some get scholarships and grants known as gift aid, or money that the students do not have to pay back. If the gift aid does not cover the whole bill, then students and their families turn to the federal government or banks for loans.
Students taking out loans have become a necessary part of financing higher education and the average amount taken out is in the thousands. According to Business Insider, the average college student takes out $37,125 in loans and takes an average of 21 years to pay it back.
“It is something everyone has to go through,” says Guenther. “If you do not have the luxury of having your parents pay for your college.”
Guenther funded her undergraduate degree with scholarships and grants from the American Indian Graduate Center. She got similar funding for graduate school as well, but she did take out loans.
“I took out loans because I wanted to have the convenience of life and I had to pay for bills,” she said.
When Guenther graduated, she was $30,000 in debt. She was lucky enough to get a job right after graduation that allowed her to set up a payment plan with her employer. To pay back the loans every month, $300 is subtracted from her paycheck and goes to the government. Since going on the payment plan, she has not thought about loans because of her steady income.
Guenther did a lot of financial planning after graduation to save money and maintain a lifestyle, like skiing, when she got a full time job. But some students like Barazza are bad with money, and need some help with financial planning.
Barazza chose CU over his state school, the University of Mexico, because CU would give him opportunities he could not get at UNM. Since he is not a Colorado resident Barazza pays $60,000 to attend CU. For his freshman year, he took out loans through Wells Fargo.
However, since his sophomore year, he has taken out loans through Sallie Mae because there is a limit of money he can borrow through Wells Fargo, and he surpassed that limit as a freshman. Barazza estimates he is roughly $120,000 in debt.
“I was not really educated in loans or how to pay them back,” he says.
He is not the only student that feels kept out of the loop regarding loans and paying them back.
“I never got a lesson on how to take out loans and I think people should learn how to take them out,” Hill said.
Hill has scholarships and is a residential advisor in Hallett Hall to pay for school. But with all of that aid, there was still a couple of thousand dollars left over, so Hill had to take out loans. She did not want the burden of paying for school to fall on the shoulders of her mother, so Hill took out loans herself. What started as a couple thousand, turned into $21,000.
“I have not been paying them back because working on campus gives you oh so much money for yourself and not enough to pay them [the loans] back,” she said.
So with students in the dark about loans, with little education on how to manage money, and thousands of dollars to pay back after senior year, they can face problems paying back the loans. Problems include misinterpreting complex language in the loan contracts, interacting with aggressive loan collectors and overall confusion about loans. However, issues can be avoided if students speak to Ben Wurzel.
Wurzel works in Career Services and is the Money Sense Program Manager. He got a masters degree from Colorado State University and graduated with $20,000 in debt. Over a few years, Wurzel has paid off all of his loans.
As the Money Sense Program Manager, he works with students to help them build healthy financial habits and put them to good use. For example, if Hill or Barazza came to see him, then they would calculate the amount of loans they have to pay back and determine the best course of action to budget for things such as living expenses and saving money.
“I work with all students but most of the time I work with seniors. But sometimes students do not know I exist in the Career Services office,” Wurzel said.
Wurzel has said that when people come in to speak to him they feel better because they have a definite plan on what they have to do to pay back their loans. However, he wishes that people knew more about loans because two very common things that trip up students are different interest rates and the loan contract.
But the biggest issue that Wurzel sees starts before students go to college. High school seniors and families tend to over borrow or take out more money than what is necessary to fund education. Wurzel said the can be fixed with more education about paying for college.
“When people borrow a lot to attend an institution for undergrad, taking out nearly $200,000, it is a lot harder to get a start in life because they are behind financially,” he says.
One piece of advice Wurzel gives to high school seniors is to talk about finances with their families, and how they are going to pay for school when their financial aid package arrives. But Wurzel recognizes that talking about money is a complicated subject for students and their families.
“It’s a developmental thing,” says Wurzel. “People will not know the impact of the loans until you have to pay them back and to lessen the blow people need to talk about finances, even though it is uncomfortable.”
For people like Hill and Barazza talking about finances is a complicated topic because they come from homes where they did not talk about money. However, sending someone to college forces people to talk about finances, and students think about the debt they will be in a lot throughout their college experience, especially if graduation is only a year or less away.
The fear causes people to think about planning for their future. Guenther is an example of a student who planned their future and is following through on it. Others still in undergrad like Barazza and Hill think about what kind of job they have to get after graduation so they can start paying off the loans and rid themselves of debt as soon as possible.
Barazza wants to do cell research and he says the fear of debt has caused him to look at jobs he can secure before he walks across the stage so he can start making money and live how he wants. For the junior, he wants to buy a house and travel, things that are difficult when you are $100,000 in debt.
“When looking at a starting salary for the job I want it would be about $42,000,” he says.
That is about the median salary Hill will have when they go into non-profit work with LGBTQ youth. But it is going to take a while for the gender non-conforming student to move out to where they want to work. To make the impact Hill wants to have, they have to move from Colorado.
“A lot of organizations I want to work with are in L.A. So I need to get a job and make money so I doubt I will use the six month grace period,” she said.
When students graduate, they have the option of taking advantage of a six- month grace period provided by the federal government to pay back their loans. Some students do nothing and accrue more debt, or they work when they graduate, like Guenther did and Hill will do to pay them back.
But when Guenther started working for CU, her employer gave her the option on how to pay back her loans, something that is not often available for recent college graduates. However, sharing information about repayment options for student loans is going to become more common in Colorado.
In March, Gov. Polis signed into law a bill that would make it a requirement for state employees to receive materials on how to pay back their student loans and loan forgiveness programs. The bill also grants that department personnel give its employers the most recent set of information.
Colorado and other states are looking to help lessen the burden their employers face paying back their student loans. It is a step in the right direction of lessening the debt and making the repayment process easier than it has to be.
“There is a crazy amount of people in debt and it can set them back years if they do not take it seriously,” Hill said.
While Hill will not be a state employee, she and other students feel optimistic about more repayment programs being in place at their jobs, since employers are more aware of the weight of debt.
“It will make things easier because I know that who I work for understands the issue and will help,” Barazza says.