Recently the radical US Supreme Court has again slapped down Americans trying establish financial freedom. The reasoning behind it (although no HARM was ever shown) comes down to some people chose not to go to college so therefore would not be eligible for benefits. There are some people in my generation who do not feel it is fair that a portion of loans are forgiven to people today while they had to pay off their loans.
- In 2020-2021 dollars, one year’s college tuition in 1963 cost just over $4,300. In 2020, it cost nearly $14,000.[1]
- The total cost of a year of college was about $10,600 in 1963. In 2020, it was almost $26,000.Note Reference [1]
- Across all types of schools, the cost of college has increased more than 143%, or 2.4 times, between 1963 and 2020.
- Compared to other school types, four-year public colleges saw the steepest price hikes from 2000-2020, jumping from roughly $13,000 a year to over $21,000 annually.Note Reference [1]
- Attending a four-year public college costs 64% more than it did 20 years ago.
- Attending a two-year public college costs 59% more than it did 20 years ago.
- Across all schools, tuition spikes are driving increases in the overall cost of college.
- From 2000-2020, average tuition and fees rose by 69%, from $8,082 to $13,677 a year.
YES, education is expensive. But the cost of ignorance cannot be measured. Many people complain that schools should be more like training grounds to learn a subject. Schools should be a place where you learn to think and reason.
I had the joy or running into one of my former gymnasts while I was down in New Orleans for a convention. She is currently a History professor at Xavier University. When she told me about the debt she had been carrying for years I was floored. It was unimaginable.
Here is her story:
I Had All of My Student Loans Forgiven. You Might Be Eligible Too.
I’m not sure about the rest of you, but up until recently I figured I was going to die with my colossal student loan debt. It is possible I have fantasized asking someone to print out the details of the never-decreasing debt and send them along with me into the afterlife, just to be sure they attached to no one else. And I’ve become an expert at ignoring all the news swirling about the failures of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, or the veritable uselessness of $10,000 in loan dismissals. It was just all too depressing. Today, though, I am asking everyone who works in the worlds of non-profit, public sector, and higher ed, including ALL teachers, to tune in, even if just for a minute. There is a light – it is faint – but it’s there.
About 30 years ago I made a decision based on the best information I had – mind you, I was 17, but I was a good student, and, I thought, conscientious. I elected to go to the most academically prestigious university I had been admitted to – the University of Pennsylvania. I was pretty stubborn, so when I made that decision there was little that could have moved me, including the high price tag. Not even when my father handed me his income tax return and a blank FAFSA, instructing me that if I was going to take on that debt, I should learn to understand it. Not even seeing that my first year’s tuition, room & board, and fees would total just under $26,000, despite the fair bit it was reduced after Penn processed the FAFSA. I had firmly decided that the financial burdens would be worth the education and the prestige I would gain with an Ivy League degree, particularly given my parents had not gone to college themselves.
My four years at Penn were world-changing in personal and intellectual ways, helping me recognize my love for historical thinking and clarifying to me that despite being a first-generation college student I could pursue a PhD. Still, all that self-realization came at the cost of about $80k in student loan debt – a debt that alternately terrified me and pushed me to pretend it wasn’t there. For a few years after my B.A. I worked and paid off some of the loans as best I could with entry-level job salaries. A few years later, now in grad school at Tulane and feeling as thought it would be an uphill battle to ever pay that large sum off, not to mention realizing there was no way I would be able to do the required research to complete my doctoral degree without additional funds, I added to that abstract pile of loans multiple summers in a row to conduct field research. By the time I was done, the debt exceeded $100k.
Today, I have been teaching at Xavier University of Louisiana – a private, Catholic, HBCU – since 2008. Xavier salaries in the humanities fall at the lower end of our ranking below the 60th percentile nationally for IIA institutions. In these past 14 years I added to that debt – thank you credit cards – to finish my first book and generally uphold my scholarly agenda. For the first several years of teaching I continued to work as a bartender, as I had through much of my undergraduate and graduate experience, simply to make ends meet.
Around six years ago I was able to secure an annual base of research funding, which has allowed me, finally, to stop funding my own research (aka, my job) and start saving for a house down payment. I also discovered that, for reasons unclear to me, mortgage companies don’t count student loan in the same way as other debt. Since then I have been extremely lucky to secure several amazing research fellowships, travel extensively for my new book project, and buy that home. I was also just promoted to full professor which came with a substantial raise, although somehow it is the equivalent of a mentee’s starting salary as a TT assistant professor at an elite northeastern university.
Meanwhile my still-very-large student loan debt continued to loom over me. I assumed I would never pay it off, just keep making those monthly payments, which would only increase commensurate to any raises I received. In the decade and a half I paid on these loans, the total debt only increased. Being single and without children, my monthly payments sat at about 15% of my take home – which more or less squares with the statement that IDR plans cap out at 20% of discretionary income. I knew it wouldn’t transfer to anyone else when I died (phew) but I assumed I’d be paying that percentage or higher, depending on changes at FedLoan, until then.
This week that changed. Although I had enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program a decade ago (as soon as I heard about it, but several years after I had begun paying off the loans), I never thought the balance would REALLY be forgiven. I had heard all the horror stories of people enrolling in the program, being diligent about payments for the full ten years, then being summarily removed, no relief in sight. I was not optimistic, and I basically tried not to think about it, even pushing my enrollment date from my mind. But about a year ago, knowing that some reforms had been made in the program under Biden, I decided to face the music and see if I was close to the required 120 payments. I made a bunch of phone calls, refiled my employment verification, and waited.
Several months ago I got notification that, unfortunately, I had not yet made the required number of payments. I was only at 94. Although I knew I had made more than that, I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to fight to get those “missing” payments recognized. Or that they just wouldn’t get counted, and we would continue this cycle forever. I added “call MyFedLoan” to my to-do list and proceeded to ignore that particular entry for weeks.
Around mid-May I got another notification from the federal student loan portal. When I finally clicked through to get the message (yes, it took several days because I assumed it was more frustrating news), I got this massive shock:
Congratulations! On Oct. 6, 2021, the Department of Education announced a change to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program rules for a limited time that allows you to get credit for payments you’ve made on loans that wouldn’t normally qualify for PSLF. As a result of this limited PSLF waiver (StudentAid.gov/pslfwaiver), we conducted another review of your Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) & Temporary Expanded PSLF (TEPSLF) Certification & Application (PSLF Form) and payment history. We have determined that you have successfully made the required 120 monthly payments in order to have all or a portion of your loans listed below forgiven.
Reading on, I saw my outstanding balance: $0. I was in total disbelief. Wanting human reassurance I called customer service, just to get them to verify out loud the information contained in the letter. Apparently, it really was forgiven. Over the past few days I’ve tried to process what this means to me. First, it gives me the smallest bit of hope that as a society we might be able to amend the way we finance higher education and begin to value the ambition of all students – not just the ones who want to go into finance. I would never have been able to see myself in the world of academia without pushing into that purportedly refined air and being told by my professors at Penn that I belonged there. Having my student loan debt forgiven means we might have a chance to continue diversifying the areas of professional life that have traditionally been gate-kept by money, power, and prestige.
However, it also means that 15% of my take home can now be put back into the economy in productive ways – whether that is in supporting organizations I care about, building my home equity, or even just saving for my retirement. I can also worry a little less about how I will finance that retirement, which is fairly important for a single, childless person, but also critical for opening up the profession to new, fresh generations of teacher-scholars.
I wanted to share my story because an astounding number of people do not know about this program. At lunch the other day with a half dozen university professors many of them had never heard of it, or only barely knew its general purpose. In the days since my letter I have told my story to multiple friends and colleagues; a shocking percentage assumed that the program didn’t apply to them because they worked at a private college or university, or because their loans are not being serviced by the federal government. Unless you work for a for-profit institution, you qualify. And even if your student loans are handled by private servicers you can consolidate under the government and get those back payments counted under the limited waiver, at least until October 2022. As public sector professionals and university leaders we must to be able to help each other with these issues, both for our collective good and to better press for an improved financial landscape for our students and future generations of public sector workers.
Every possible eligible person should get into this program now while this limited waiver is still in place. If you haven’t enrolled in PSLF and work for a 501(c)3, get signed up immediately. Send in your employment certification form and ask MyFedLoan for a count of your payments. Wait in the customer service queue on the phone to speak to an agent (I know, the worst, but really. . . ) and have them walk you through the steps to ensure you are enrolled and repaying through a certified program. If not, ask them to process the limited waiver and get on a certified repayment plan, consolidating your loans serviced by private companies with FedLoan if you need to. Recertify annually by sending in the employment form and regularly triggering the count. There are a number of good pieces online about how to be persistent in this process. But make it a priority over the next few months. This program has been failing for so long – we must take advantage of this window and get as much debt forgiven as possible.
Ultimately, as we know of late in truly embodied ways, how we value public sector and care-work is a matter of collective survival and yet it is woefully undervalued. If you work in education or the non-profit sector, you are using your education to help build a better society. You did not choose your career path because it was going to set you up for a comfortable life financially, but because you have a passion to care for others in some particular capacity. Isn’t that enough? Should we be saddled with this massive debt – for many of us a debt taken on at a time that such a thing was just what you had to do to “get ahead”? Wouldn’t it be better if we could reform the system so that we can train teachers and professors and social workers and non-profit leaders – and not have them always debilitatedly pondering how they will pay the bills? As an educator I want my students to be able to make decisions about their lives based on their skills, interests, and abilities, and matching those to potential career paths. I want them to consider work that contributes to a more just and humane society, no matter how they conceive it. What I desperately fear is that these decisions are becoming more and more dependent on whether and how much debt 17-year-olds think they might or might not be able to carry for the rest of their lives.
I believe we must continue to press for reform in the way this country deals with higher education financing. Opting out of college as my parents did is becoming an increasingly less viable choice. Even trade and specialized training schools are expensive, and we should be finding ways to allow more students access to university and jobs training, not less. We need to set our future generations up for success, not crippling debt or, worse, crippling (impossible) choices.
Reforming PSLF and forgiving student debt is a start, but we have so much more to do.