This article looks at the student debt crisis as it affects low income students in Massachusetts. A couple of interesting interactive graphics.
What strikes me is that none of the low income students profiled graduated in STEM fields, where job prospects and incomes are better.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2016/05/18/hopes-dreams-debt/fR60cKakwUlGok0jTlONTN/story.html
Not necessarily true for all STEM fields.
Overall, it looks as though marginal colleges are staying afloat by preying on low income students.
I wouldn’t say they are “preying”. It sounds like the colleges profiled are, themselves, struggling to stay afloat financially.
I think the best immediate solution for low-income students is to start out at community college, and for community colleges to be free to qualified students.
My D says many, many of her peers - with grades similar, or better, to hers, with high test scores, are choosing to attend out local cc for two years, to save money.
Furthermore, our local cc just announced that, starting next year, it will give merit scholarships to qualifying students going up to full tuition and fees.
I also hear about (and personally know a couple) students who are offered full-tuition scholarships to 4-year universities they can commute to; but they choose instead to attend another university where they will take on lots of debt. That’s all about feeling entitled to “prestige” and the desire to go away from home. Also, not really understanding how much money that is, and how long it will take them to pay off…
It’s a really foolish decision, most of the time.
Or students who need aid, but don’t even shop around for schools that would give them merit aid or better financial aid, because they don’t know any better. Everyone else is going to Big State U, so…
(Assuming you mean those who do not get large enough scholarships or financial aid at four year schools…)
However, Massachusetts (where this article focuses on) does have relatively high cost community colleges.
According to the article (chart labeled “The big short: When aid to low-income students isn’t enough”), the net price at four year schools in Massachusetts for students from families with under $30,000 income was generally lowest for the well endowed privates (Amherst, Olin, Harvard, MIT, Williams, etc.). The Massachusetts state universities came in with net prices from around $8,000 to $14,000. But Massachusetts also has lots of apparently poorly endowed privates with net prices that are obviously too high to be affordable for a student from a low income family.
For Boston area students UMass Boston provides a relatively low cost undergraduate education that is good quality. But it is a commuter school that does not provide the “traditional college experience” that even many low income students demand, and take out loans to cover.
@ucbalumnus Of course it is not true for all STEM fields. But a degree in engineering has better job and income prospects than a degree in human services or communications. But engineering requires academic preparation that many low income students do not have, either by circumstances or by choice.
It would be nice if people stopped referring to “STEM fields” as if they all have enhanced job prospects at graduation. The most popular STEM fields are in the biology area, where major-specific job prospects are not that great, and many graduates end up in the generic bachelor’s degree job market. It is mostly in the E (and M to a lesser extent) part of STEM, and CS (whether you call that S or E) where the enhanced job prospects are, and even that depends on industry business cycles.
Yes, I was talking about students who don’t have the high grades and test scores for lucrative merit awards at 4-year universities.
We have expensive community colleges here in Illinois, too. Which is why I’m happy to hear that some districts, like ours, are starting to find ways to give students a discount or let them attend for free.
It’s likely not enough for all who wish to attend cc here. It would be good if they could lower the tuition overall.
Our local cc is 6k a year. For comparison, my D is attending a 4-year university OOS, next fall, in the neighboring state and their in-state tuition is 8k a year. Granted, she, like many others, is paying room and board in the residence halls, but… there are students commuting to that school, a 4-year school, paying only 2k more a year than our community college here in a neighboring state.
Illinois has one university that costs around 8k a year for tuition, and it’s in a very rural area, not really ideal for lots of commuters.
Only two of them mentioned their major (communicatins and business admin), and both were gainfully employed and repaying loans. The rest never revealed what their major was. Many of the young people profiled never even graduated, so what they were majoring is is kind of irrelevant anyway. They could’ve been a computer science or physics major to no avail because they don’t have a BA. The rest simply borrowed too much; it doesn’t matter if you’re a physics or computer science major if you borrowed $100K in undergrad.
The thing that struck me is that these students almost universally chose to attend small tuition-dependent colleges that didn’t even offer them generous financial aid packages vs. attending a regional public in their home state. No, most of New England’s state universities aren’t nationally known - but neither are the tiny colleges these folks attended! I’m kind of baffled that Kenny Jean was so surprised many potential employers had never heard of Mount Ida.
In Massachusetts, Salem State University’s full-time tuition and fees for the academic year is less than $10,000. At Southern Connecticut State University, it’s around $10,000. Even at the flagships - at UMass it’s about $15,000, University of Maine around $12,000, University of Vermont about $16,000 and at UConn about $13,000. Compare that to the $34,000 tuition at Curry, $26,000 tuition at Pine Manor or Lesley, and $36,000 tuition at Emmanuel.
Another thing that struck me - the journalist asked the admissions deans two point-blank questions: 1) How much is too much for a student from a low-income, zero-EFC family to borrow for college and 2) is $100,000 too much to borrow to attend college for these students? These answers have some pretty easy and clear answers - 1) probably not more than around $30-40K because that’s what you can expect to make as a new college grad and 2) absolutely yes. Yet these admissions deans hemmed, hawed, and danced around the question.
I don’t know what purpose these non-selective private colleges serves in the society? It is a horrible idea for a low income student to attend such a college by taking out a loan.
The comments remind me of an acquaintance who was a law professor formerly at a marginal law school. At the beginning of the legal unemployment crisis in 2010, she told me that she felt guilty teaching her students because most of them were racking up six figures in loans to attend a lower tier law school, and that they would have problems passing the bar and getting a job requiring a JD. I asked her why, if she felt that way, why didn’t she warn her students and leave the school. Her response was that the job was too easy to give up. She ended up being terminated a few years later as part of an enrollment/staff cut.
These admissions deans are probably in the same boat.