Graduation is a time of celebration, excitement, and joy for the future each student is about to embark on. Six months after graduation, however, that excitement fades when students receive their loan repayment start dates and pick the plan that will financially lock them in for anywhere from 10 to 25 years.
Student loans is a sensitive topic for some. There are students who have never received any type of loan and will never know the burden of monthly payments, while others will watch these loans consume their paychecks.
Three 2015 Capital graduates Andrew Rutsky, Mel Verhoff, and Brad Robley are all starting to face this tragic reality.
Rustsky was able to pick an atypical plan, one that many people find risky if it is not planned well.
Rutsky, who graduated with an early childhood education and intervention degree, attends the University of Pennsylvania law school. After spending his summer and spring semesters researching student loans, he opted to defer his undergraduate loans until six months after he graduates law school in 2018.
Deferring loans means that you will not have to pay your loans during the time of deferment; however, interest will accumulate during the time, and depending on the loan type, either you or the government will pay the interest rate during the deferment period. Many people believe that if a student is not smart about the payments, then deferment will do more harm than good.
Verhoff graduated from the Capital nursing program and is currently facing her first loan payment on Nov. 8. She received both subsidized and unsubsidized federal loans and has picked the 10-year payment plan. Verhoff hopes that she will be able to make some additional payments and pay the loans off sooner.
Regarding the six-month grace period, Verhoff said “These past six months went by so fast! You think you have quite a bit of time to build up a savings, but it creeps up on you faster than you expect.”
Robley graduated with a double major in criminology and sociology. He received undergraduate loans from Discover and has chosen to pay 10 percent of his loan every month for the next 15 years from his own income.
Like Verhoff, Robley hopes that along the road he will be able to increase his payment amounts to pay off his loans quicker. Robley currently works as an administrive assistant for an industrial scale company and states.
“I was lucky enough to have a job waiting for me when I graduated and moved home, so I am not afraid right now. But for those that are still in the hunt, I can understand their worry,” Robley said. Although this job is not in his field, he said “it’s making me good money” as he trains for the police academy.
When asked how they felt about having to pay these loans, many expressed feelings of being overwhelmed.
“It’s hard not to think about how long it is going to take to pay them off, but I am also okay with it, knowing that they will be paid off eventually,” Verhoff said.
Despite the fact that Rustky said he had minimal student loans and will not be fully facing them for a while, he still responded feeling annoyed by having them at all and strongly believed that student loans are “an arbitrary measurement of over priced education.”
He conveyed his dismay about the lack of knowledge students have about student loans.
“Getting an education is great and all, but a cost benefit analysis is needed. Taking out excessive loans to pay for a degree that doesn’t put you in a good position to pay them back is a terrible idea, in my opinion,” Rustky said. “The value of your degree or desired job needs to be balanced with the cost of your loans.”
When Robley was asked how he felt about having to pay his loans, he said “It is always frightening knowing that you are responsible for such mass amounts of money repayment, but that’s why we went to college, to gain the most knowledge possible so we can land those jobs that can let us pay off loans and car payments and provide for our families.”
All three students will be paying off their loans solely with their own income. When asked if any of these students would be willing to share their loan amount, almost all chose not to answer.
