Student Loan Debt and Basic Needs Insecurity
Student Loan Debt Statistics: 2021
Helhoski, A., & Lane, R. (2021, August 19). Student loan debt statistics: 2021. Nerd Wallet. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/student-loan-debt
Key Points: An overview of data and statistics concerning student loan debt.
- $1.6 trillion in federal and private student loan debt
- Average student load debt for the 62% of 2019 graduates with debt was $28,950
- In 2020 the average US household owed $57,520 in student loan debt
- As of 2021, 1 in 8 Americans have student loan debt
- Ages 35 to 49 have the most debt totalling more than $600 billion
- Types of students loans: Federal, Private, and Parent Plus
- Total outstanding loans:
Federal: $1.59 trillion
Private: $136.31 billion
Parent Plus: $103.6 billion
"Among all borrowers, women typically borrow more for college compared with men (and attain more degrees), according to 2020 data by the American Association of University Women. And Black students borrow more often and greater amounts compared with all other races and ethnicities, according to federal data." (Helhoski & Lane, 2021).
"A 2021 high school graduate could expect to borrow $38,147 for their bachelor’s degree, according to a May 2021 NerdWallet analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data. Around 45% of high school graduates are expected to enroll in college, NerdWallet found. Among those students, around 45% are expected to take on student debt over an average five years to attain a bachelor's degree." (Helhoski & Lane, 2021).
This site lists other great student load stats on repayment status, loan forgiveness, default, FAFSA completion, and income-driven repayment plans.
Five Years of Evidence on Campus Basic Needs Insecurity
Baker-Smith, C., Coca, V., Goldrick-Rab, S., Looker, E., Richardson, B., & Williams, T. (2020, February). #RealCollege 2020: Five years of evidence on campus basic needs insecurity. The Hope Center. https://hope4college.com/realcollege-2020-five-years-of-evidence-on-basic-needs-insecurity/
Key Points: Lessons learned from surveys between 2015 to 2019 by the Hope Center concerning basic needs insecurity on college campuses that included over 330,000 students and 411 two and four year institutions.
Initial Thoughts: I'm thankful for both this EDHI class and my EDCC classes for making me aware of needs insecurity in higher education. This is something I had not considered before these classes. You can read more of my thoughts here from the last #RealCollege article I read. I like that this article also included additional needs such as "transportation, childcare, stress, and mental health and how this effects student-athletes, faculty and staff, and students attending Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs)" (Baker-Smith et al., 2020, p. 2).
I guess I've been thinking more lately about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a motivational theory. Maslow theorized needs from the bottom to the top must be met before a person becomes fully self-actualized or the best they can be. At the bottom of the hierarchy is Physiological Needs like food, shelter, and clothings. The next level up is Safety and Security like health, wellness, and financial security. Both bottom two layers are often considered basic needs which falls right in line with this study. As a part-time academic advisor to freshmen I find myself often giving "homework" to my students who are failing their classes. This usually involves talking with their professors, getting a tutor and/or academic coach, talking to a career coach. This is just the academic side. There are students who often confide in me about their anxiety and depression. Or who have had love ones lost due to Covid or other illnesses. Who are struggling financially. I share resources with them which includes disability services, the counseling center, the health center's psychiatrist, financial aid, and BSU's basic needs hub. What I struggle with is wanting to fix it all for them. When they see me again and their grades haven't changed and they haven't met with their professors, I admittedly often forget that there are bigger needs going on in these students' lives that take priority. However, I can't make them use the resources I provide—even if I offer to walk them over. Ultimately it's up to them to take the next step ("While supports for students exist on the federal, state, and college levels, our data continue to show that most students who experience basic needs insecurity do not access them" (Baker-Smith et al., 2020, p. 25)). And that's the rub for me. I want to do if for them. I want them to already be self-actualized and see how amazing they could be. I see it in them, but there are too many other basic needs overwhelming them. I believe that having a team of people: academic advisors, success coaches, and faculty members to keep in touch with these students and make sure they are taking advantage of the resources that can help them with those bottom two levels of Maslow's hierarchy seems to be a good start.
"The number of on-campus supports being offered is increasing but that does not mean that students who need them the most are accessing those resources (Figure 14). The most commonly used on-campus supports are campus health clinic and/or counseling, food from a campus food pantry, and free food from another campus resource. For example, only 21% of food insecure students use a campus food pantry and less than 10% use emergency aid" (Baker-Smith et al., 2020, p. 27).
Why? How can we help?
Image: Verywell / Joshua Seong
Students who experience basic needs insecurity are overwhelmingly active participants in the labor force. The majority (70%) of students who experience food insecurity, housing insecurity, and homelessness are employed (Figure 11). Among working students, those who experience basic needs insecurity often work more hours than other students (Baker-Smith et al., 2020, p. 23).
This breaks my heart. And we wonder why we need to raise the minimum wage?
Pages 28 and 29 provide some practical tips for campuses. For me personally I felt I could add a Basic Needs Statement to my signature with a link to the BSU's basic needs hub. The report suggested faculty to add a statement to their syllabi so more students could be aware of the resources. The link to their statement didn't work. I would have liked to have seen one.
Looking Back to Move Forward: A History of Federal Student Aid. A film series documenting the policy and the political origins of federal financial aid programs
Lumina Foundation. (2021). Looking back to move forward: A history of federal student aid. https://www.luminafoundation.org/history-of-federal-student-aid/
Key Points: The goal of Looking Back to Move Forward is to give the viewer an understanding of the the federal student aid programming by understanding its origins over the past 60 years. As the website says, "To understand the current state of federal student aid, it’s important to understand its origins" (Lumina Foundation, 2021, Get Educated). The series involves six chapters:
Growth of Federal Student Loans
Partnering with Campuses and States
Building Blocks of Student-Based Aid
How the Federal Government Distributes Aid to Students
Student Aid Through Tax Benefits
Evolution of Student Loan Repayment
Initial Thoughts: "You can have your scholarship program if we can have a loan program" = Higher Education Act of 1965. What I gathered from this chapter was that student loans are a complicated mess and it does seem to have gotten out of control. I believe the initial intent behind student loans was well-meaning ... a way to allow all students to access higher education, but it's obviously taken a turn for the worse. Overall, I feel like Chapter one was summer up best by Thomas Wolanin when he said, "It was a very highly complex enterprise. Very few policy makers understood what Sallie Mae was about" (Lumina Foundation, 2021, Chapter 1 3:55). In general, numbers hurt my brain, which is funny that I chose Paying the Price as one of the books I wanted to read for my EDHI 602 class (I didn't know there would be so many calculations involved!). But my takeaway then as it is now is that "In the words of the Truman Commission: 'For the great majority of our boys and girls, the kind and amount of education they may hope to attain depends, not on their own abilities, but on the family or community into which they happened to be born or, worse still, on the color of their skin or the religion of their parents.'" (Zook, 1947, p. 27, as cited in, Goldrick-Rab, 2016, p. 14). Truman vowed to protect the lower income. He wanted all people to have access to college. It's seems loans have become more of a burden than a help to all students.
Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the price: College costs, financial aid, and the betrayal of the American dream. Kindle.
Comentários