“It’s Scary.” Students grappling with effects of loans after school

By Shayna Waltower

Five years ago, Chelyse Abrams was like many other high school students and in the middle of the college enrollment process. She filled out an application, received an acceptance letter, submitted her enrollment deposit and met with advisors about preparing for her first semester of college.

But one of these meetings would have significant effects on her life after college. It was a session with her loan advisor.

Abrams did not know much about taking out loans, but she knew she could not afford to attend college without them.

“I was pretty naive about everything regarding loans,” she said. “My advisors told me about them, but I knew it was something I needed to do, so I just jumped in and applied for them.”

Four years later, graduation was approaching, and Abrams found herself concerned with how she would repay the debt after school.

“You also have to start building up that income in order to pay the loan back,” she said. “I didn’t know if I would find a job in the three months, six months time that I needed to go ahead and start paying off those loans.”

But, her semester-long internship at Macon’s WGXA News ended with her receiving a job offer at the station, and she currently works as a news editor. While she said she is still paying off her undergraduate loans, she is looking to go back to school and get a master’s degree.

“It will help with getting higher paying jobs, so that I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to pay for all of this,” Abrams said.

For Mercer University Senior Cortlyn Belvin, finding a job to support paying for school after graduation was one of the primary reasons she chose to major in biology.

“I’ve had to work my way through college. I’m going to have to pay (the loans) back. I know my parents aren’t going to, so it definitely affected my choice in what I was going to do,” she said.

Belvin is preparing to start graduate school in the fall, where most of her tuition will be covered by federal student aid. She said her biggest concern is how she will pay off her current loans once she finishes the graduate program.

“It’s kind of very real that within the next year I’m going to have to start paying them back,” she said. “Not knowing if I’m going to have a job, not knowing how much I will make a year, and not knowing how much I will be paying every month is very scary.”

Because the graduate program she will be attending will only allow her to work 20 hours a week, the amount she can set aside to pay off the loans is limited.

“It’s going to be really difficult to balance,” she said.

Abrams and Belvin are two examples of the millions of college students taking out loans to finance their education.

According to research conducted by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, the national amount of student loan debt increased by about 6.2 percent from 2015 to 2016.

Crystal Morris, senior associate director of the Mercer University Financial Planning Office, said some of the most consistent advice she offers to her students is for them to keep their lenders updated on their financial situations.

“For students that, for whatever reason, they were working for two years, paying on their loans (but then) there’s a reduction in workforce, and they lost their job so now they can’t pay it, contact them. Stay in contact,” Morris said.

She also tells them to meet with a financial advisor before applying for a loan and before graduating to discuss repayment options.

“Our job is to work with the students, so it’s in their best interest to come and talk to us to help keep them from taking out more loans than they need and just to help them prepare for dealing with the loans after graduation.”