I like the initial premise of this piece by Kevin Carey, the policy director of a think tank named Education Sector, in The New Republic—the idea that media outlets like to post sad stories about college graduates who are unable to find jobs in their fields of study so they end up accepting work that doesn’t necessarily require a college degree (i.e. bartending, barista-ing), which ultimately devalues what a college degree is worth these days. Trend stories aside, data shows that the unemployment rate for college graduates is half of what it is for workers with no more than a high school diploma.

Carey says the same kinds of stories popped up in 1982—graduates from Yale who ended up bartending and volunteering to fill up their time—but many of these graduates moved on to have fine careers. And yet, one very important point is missing from Carey’s argument about how we should consider the value of a college degree: the high cost getting one in an age where tuition is rising scarily fast as states cut funding for higher education. College graduates may be in a better position to become employed than those with a high school diploma, but we should consider what it means if those college graduates spend the majority of their working lives paying off the education loans they had to take out to get that degree in the first place.

Photo: Rennett Stowe

The cost of college tuition has been rising stupidly fast in the US. Over the last 35 years, it’s up more than 1,100%. During the same period, the Consumer Price Index–a broad gauge of the level of prices in the US–is up about 260%.

Matt Phillips posted a series of charts at Quartz explaining the student debt crisis, but really, saying that college tuition has been “rising stupidly fast” pretty much sums it up.

I have $129,240.55 worth of student loans from my undergraduate degree. This is far more than most people, but I also know I’m not the only one in this situation.

I applied to three colleges. I wasn’t terribly interested in Wright State University, but it was only a few hours from my home in northwest Ohio, and offered the major I was interested in (film production). Bowling Green State University was a very local state university that didn’t offer my major. And New York University was notoriously expensive, but was reputed to have one of the best film programs in the country. I was accepted to all three, but the real decision was between the latter two. Bowling Green State University offered me a full ride minus housing, and NYU offered a combination of scholarships and grants that would cover half the cost of tuition and housing (about $50,000/year).

I assumed that finding a job in the industry would help me pay off the loans easily. I know my parents tried to talk with me about what this would mean in terms of debt, but being 17 and from a small town, I was dazzled by the prospect of NYU and, frankly, money in amounts over a couple thousand meant nothing to me. I had no frame of reference.

My mom was a non-profit attorney, and my dad was in local news production, and their combined income wasn’t enough to contribute to my tuition. They were (and are) extremely supportive, and sent what money they could whenever I didn’t have enough to eat (and emergency funds when I studied abroad and was apparently not too great at calculating exchange rates), but everything else came from a combination of federal and private loans. I held a handful of jobs during school and in the summers between semesters, but the bulk of that money went toward funding film projects, saving for my semester abroad, and just meeting general expenses in a costly city. (Then there was an unfortunate car accident that occurred in the line of duty at a summer pizza-delivery job, meaning the bulk of my earnings went right to repairing a bumper and headlight).

That my dad was also studying towards a master’s, or that I had a younger sister just reaching college age, are facts that FAFSA doesn’t take into consideration. On top of that, three years into my degree, the FAFSA criteria changed, and it was determined my parents should be contributing well over 50 percent of their income to my tuition, which cut the amount I was getting from the Pell grant. I made up that difference in private loans, too.

Repayment options are far more limited for private loans, which I did not realize going in. My $15,000 of federal loans have totally doable repayment amounts (one is $110 monthly, and the other is $190 quarterly), and I can defer them for three months at a time by filing online if I lose my job or am experiencing financial hardship. I’m making regular payments, and they don’t feel like a burden.

For the $113,000 in private loans, however, Sallie Mae charges $150 for the privilege of putting them in forbearance for three months (and of course that isn’t applied to repayment). I did this twice: once right out of college when I was looking for a job and needed the extra money for the deposit on an apartment, and once a year later when I was laid off. I’m currently making interest-only payments, which, for me, is $550 per month. In the four years since I started repayment, I’ve paid Sallie Mae nearly $25,000—the bulk of it interest. And actually, thanks to interest that accrued during the grace period immediately after graduation, and during the months I’d gotten a forbearance, the total I owe has actually gone up, from $113,315 to $113,694. Even the income tax deduction for payments on student loan interest (which includes federal and private loans) is only $2,500, laughably short of what I pay in interest each year.

When I was first applying for the loans, I was told over and over that immediately after graduation, they could be consolidated and I could get a lower interest rate. Right about then, however, the economy collapsed, and when banks started limiting what loans they offered, student loan consolidation was virtually eliminated. Only a handful of banks offer private loan consolidation now. I’ve applied at two—the first was turned down because I needed a cosigner. The second time, I applied only for my two highest interest loans, about $40,000 which is currently at 8.25 percent interest. This time, the bank turned me down for having too high a debt-to-income ratio, which seems counter to the whole idea of consolidation loans!

Going into this, I had a vague idea of how loan repayment would affect what I could save or what I could spend on rent, I really wasn’t prepared for the emotional toll of debt. More than once I’ve wished Sallie Mae adhered to the Old Testament-sanctioned debt repayment options so I could just trade in my first-born baby and be absolved. I’ve resigned myself to (probably) never owning property, and I’ve definitely daydreamed about all the things I could be doing with an extra $25,000. At one low point, my husband found me crying in the living room in the middle of the night. Earlier in the day we were talking optimistically about career-related ambitions, about the possibilities of my doing freelance compositing and motion graphics, or his doing music performance and composition full time. I’d felt before how constricting debt could be, when fantasizing about long cross-country trips I couldn’t afford to take, or career changes I couldn’t risk, but now that someone else’s dreams were entangled with my own, it was worse.

My husband is a big part of the reason this all hasn’t completely crushed me. We pool our income and share all our expenses, and between us we have enough for groceries, rent, and the occasional drinks or dinner with our friends. We monitor our budget pretty closely with Mint, which has been a tremendous help. We also just paid off his (smaller) student loans from the U.K., so we’ll be able to start paying the principal on my private loans. He’s very supportive and understanding, and his level-headedness helps me keep things in perspective. I know I’m lucky to have a partner so ready to stand by my side in this. I feel grateful for my parents, as well. They have done everything possible to smooth out the bumpy post-grad period, whether it was making multiple 10-hour car trips to help me move, or becoming a guarantor on a lease, or letting me move back home for the month I was unemployed.

I was able to find a job in my chosen field, which is also lucky. I’m pretty junior, and don’t make a huge salary at the moment, but there’s a lot of room to move up the ladder. If I stay in this field, it’s conceivable that someday I’ll earn enough to actually pay off my loans completely. Even that is kind of hard to imagine, so I’m also preeetty keenly interested in HR 4170, the Student Loan Forgiveness Act. It would introduce IBR and bankruptcy options for private loans, as well as caps on how much debt can be forgiven for incoming students.

Most of my regret comes down to lack of information. I wish I’d known more about private loans and the crippling repayment terms and interest rates. It’s incredibly disheartening to see how much money I’ve given to Sallie Mae while losing ground on my debt. I should have done more research on what a reasonable amount of debt is for an undergraduate degree, and that I’d had some guidelines to follow (like, perhaps, the proposed cap in the Student Loan Forgiveness Act). I wish I’d thought harder about the opportunity of that full ride at state college, rather than dismissing it so quickly. And even if my heart was set on moving to the city, I wish I’d looked into more colleges than NYU, or found a Fancy College that wasn’t notoriously stingy with financial aid. At the very least, I wish I’d been able to take a year off before college to do some more research (although this was before the Affordable Care Act, so taking time off would have meant losing coverage under my parent’s health insurance plan). Hopefully talking about all of this can help other people make better decisions.

Betty LG Cameron lives in Brooklyn, does visual effects in Manhattan, and occasionally posts on her tumblr.

“I get four years at McGill for a year at a U.S. college.” More American students are applying to and attending colleges located in Canada as a way to rein in tuition costs.

The Times’s Choice blog is answering a few questions this morning about choosing between colleges after students have been accepted into a handful of them, and it’s bringing back those memories from way back when (dream schools, safety schools, financial aid packages!). For me, I remembering it coming down between choosing between an expensive private school across the country that offered some aid and the much more affordable state school with a partial scholarship. The student debt crisis wasn’t a thing yet, but since I was paying my own way, I ran the numbers and quickly decided on the state school (UCI).

One of my favorite questions from the list is by “Water polo mom”:

This is both a philosophical and a practical question. My son is deciding between two out-of-state schools, both known for the major he wants to pursue, engineering. One is less expensive and is offering him a scholarship. The other isn’t offering him a penny, and that means he’ll come out with twice the debt. Of course, he likes that one more, despite us airing our concerns. As parents to an almost 18-year-old, do you say no or do you let him go where he wants and shoulder that financial burden for years to come?

I’d have the kid read our student debt series and have him think about it more, but would also be a little bit relieved that he’s pursuing engineering. The college admission officers provide the parent with a solid answer.

R.P. Thead argues at Policy Mic that student loans should be rebranded as “educational mortgages” to better represent the longterm nature of repayment: “In a literal translation, ‘mortgage’ is a combination of the French words mort (death), and gage (pledge). A mortgage is a death pledge.”

THIS IS A GOOD IDEA. ADDITIONAL IDEAS:

“Scholastic bondage”

“The gentleman’s encumbrance”

“Debt-mine preparatory courses”

“Prorated brain loans”

“Actual ball and chain”

“Genius collateral”

“Academic albatross”

“A huge mistake”

“Assimilation fee”

“Employability penalty”

“Obedience ensurance”

“Non-voluntary financial obligation”

“Indentured learning”

“The adjustable rate major”

“Continuous fiscal assessment”

“Prospective wage garnishing”

“Taylor Swift”

“Amortized service-learning”

“Debt prison field trip”

“Student trafficking”

“Enlistment”

“Hate mail”

“Donkey bridle”

“Years of despair”
 
 

Mallory Ortberg and William Foster live in adjacent west coast states.

I. Pretttttttttttyyyyy stupid that one of the clearest overviews I’ve found of the student debt crisis was written for financial marketers: “10 Things Every Financial Marketer Should Know About the Student Loan Crisis.” Thing number one: There is a crisis: “By the time you’re finished with this article, you’ll see there are big problems (and perhaps big opportunities) in the student lending space.”

1. There is a Crisis

2. Student Lending is Bigger Than Credit Cards, Auto Loans and Home Equity Lines

3. Borrowers of all ages owe more on their student loans and for longer.

4. One in Three Borrowers Owe Over $25,000

5. Student Loan Debt is Hampering the Housing Market
“Young home buyers now make up their smallest share in the housing market in more than a decade.”

6. Student Borrowers Don’t Know What They Are Getting Into

7. Marketing Works … But Schools Are The Gatekeepers

8. Delinquencies on Student Loans Are Way Up

9. Big Banks Are Pulling Out of the Student Lending Market

10. The CFPB is Butting In
(lololol the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is “butting in.”)

A few facts to keep in your factbook:

— Average debtload: $24K

— Median debtload: $8K public, $17K private, $31K for-profit

— In 10 years, percentage of 25-year-olds with student loan debt rose from 27 percent to 43 percent

Read the whole thing here.

II. “High school seniors are more worried about burdensome student-loan debt than about getting into the college of their dreams.”

III. Contrast that with this ridiculous Washington Post Op-ed directed at incoming students, “Don’t Listen to Those Scary Tales of Student Loan Woe.” OKAY WHY NOT?

“And, as many economists have shown, it’s almost always well worth what it does cost—assuming that you graduate and, if your loans are largish, study something that actually helps lead to a job.”

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Previously in this discussion.

This comes from Nicole, one of our readers:

“The Sallie Mae article yesterday reminded me that there is a comment period open at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for student loans! They want to hear how student loans, particularly private student loans, have affected lives. You can email them or fill out an online form and have your experience officially entered onto the public record. All the banks and the many many associations that they belong to will be commenting. I hope enough real people see this comment period and drown out those interests.”

The link to email the CFPB or submit your ideas can be found here.

Also servicey is this CFPB post on how students can protect themselves.

I think it’s underreported how incredibly nice the customer service agents at Sallie Mae can be about you not paying back your loan.

Like a lot of people, I took out loans for college, and after graduation, spent my early twenties not making enough money to pay down my debts.

Eventually I took a job at an internet-y, start-up-y, new media, digital-type company where I was nicely compensated, and I started making payments on my loans. I was laid off after 18 months.

When I called Sallie Mae to break the bad news, the customer service agent sighed and told me it was OK, pumpkin—I could put the loan into deferment.

I asked how long I could do that, and I don’t remember what she said, but she certainly didn’t seem to be sweating it, so I figured I wouldn’t either. Pay it back. Don’t pay it back. Pay a little on it. Defer it. Whatever.

I hung up the phone feeling like a fucking champion. I had faced a major financial fear, and it had been resolved thanks to a mutual agreement to not worry about it.

Two years passed, and the loan collected about $15,000 in interest. I got more full-time work and started paying my Sallie Mae bill again, but it looked kinda ugly, and I began to consider deferring it again. They’d let me do it so many times before. I once deferred paying back the loan for a year simply because it was the only way I could afford to deal with the amount of late-charges I’d racked up.

Go to the website, click a few buttons, watch the amount due that month fade to zero, and chuck those payment slips in the recycling bin.

Pondering that option, the other day I logged into Salliemae.com and asked to reset my password—just how I do on the 26th of every month to pay the bill that is due on the 25th.

Right now I can pay a bill. And yet I cannot pay a bill. Paying a bill makes me upset. I get upset because seeing money that I have earned go toward something that will never go away feels futile. I looked at my outstanding balance and was struck by cold terror.

For about three months I’d been ignoring the $20 late charges and just paying the $247 due every month, thinking that the growing past-due balance would either disappear or get so big that it disappeared or… Obama? That $247, by the way, was only going to interest; it wasn’t even touching the principal.

So I called Sallie Mae to figure out what I’d done and what I could do. I started the call by telling the INCREDIBLY CHEERFUL agent that I’d been through periods when I couldn’t pay, but now I was ready to pay aggressively for however long it took to pay this thing down (hopefully not forever).

The agent told me I had set up a plan where I paid about as little as I could, but because of that, what I was paying was only going to interest, which was continuing to accrue. I could change the plan and pay more and some amount of it would go to the principal. This sounded good to me. This is what I wanted. I want to pay more, not less. But the agent kept bringing it back to paying less—so many times that it began to seem illogical to increase the monthly payment plan. I don’t think he was doing so for any other reason than he must get five billion calls every day from people who are like, oh my god, I cannot pay this bill. That’s gotta take a toll on a person.

In fairness, that’s been me for most of my relationship with Sallie Mae. But if a guy is telling you that you can lower your bill, and he seems really cool about it—shouldn’t you do that? Isn’t having a lower bill the point of life?

If I really dig in, maybe I can get the student loan bill lower than the cable bill.

It has taken me wa-a-a-ay too long to realize the difference between a loan payment and a cable bill. If you pay too much for your cable package you can cut back and get the plan that doesn’t include HBO, or you can cancel the whole thing. Don’t pay, and they cut your cable off. There’s no giant number that Time Warner has attached to your social security number that you need to pay down every month.

Loans, on the other hand, are a big number attached to your social security number, and you have to pay them back or the number gets bigger until you give them enough money to make it smaller. Buy some scratch-off tickets. Pack up your shit and disappear.

I’d figured this out with credit cards. Unlike Sallie Mae, credit card people are not very nice when you call them and ask for a lower monthly payment. Unless you can start throwing money at your credit card company in lump sums, you’re basically trapped in a cycle where your minimum payment goes only to interest forever and the amount you owe increases every month. They won’t help you. And so early on in my career as debtor, I paid off my credit cards.

But my experience with Salle Mae has been different. You can pay more to bring the debt down, but you could also pay less and bring the debt up, and they’re cool beans either way. You can also fill out a form and not pay it at all for a while.

Of course, I appreciate how nice the Sallie Mae customer service people have been to me.

I imagine they field a lot of rough calls.

I’ve definitely called them in rough times.

It’s just that there’s an institutional crack, a systemic fuck-up when no one—not even the people at Sallie Mae—acts like they expect these loans to be repaid. They’re just trying to figure out how to help you pay something toward your debt so you don’t get thrown out of a moving boxcar.

I am a person who has a lot of anxiety, embarrassment, and fear tied up in the debt that I owe. I will also admit to being kinda sorta clueless. So carrying all that baggage means that every few years when I experience a moment of clarity or something horrible happens to my ability to draw an income, I call up the owner of my student loan—and I get hosed.

You can’t get rid of student loans, not through bankruptcy or ever. If I’m allowed to grow a loan for YEARS after my education is complete, then who is the one making a living from my education? It’s not me.

Anyway, I visited the cold and logical Salliemae.com after this latest call and figured out a way to not just make payments, but to start paying the thing off. My loan will probably be paid off in ten years. At that point I will have been out of school for 23 years, which is how old I was when I had to make my first payment to Sallie Mae.

Frank Smith lives in Brooklyn.