Mass communication freshman Morgan Ballard knew that tuition prices played a major role in her ultimate college choice. Even with her scholarships and savings account, she said, she likely will have to take out student loans for her remaining three years.
“My family had set up a savings account just for my college tuition. We set up multiple accounts with different banks, but when the banks failed we lost a few of them,” she said.
Ballard isn’t alone in her financial concerns. Loyola’s website reports that for the 2012-13 school year, a full-time student will have to pay $16,923 for tuition alone, up from $16,133 last year. After calculating tech fees, meals plans, room and board, and other various on-campus services, one year at Loyola could ultimately cost $46,608.
However, tuition prices aren’t the only financial dilemma students have to deal with. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that in 2008, the average student at a private 4-year college graduated with approximately $21,100 worth of debt. As of 2013, the average amount of debt has increased to $24,898 nationwide, an increase of almost 18 percent.
Louisiana graduates come slightly below the national average with only $22,455 in debt.
The average Loyola graduate has a slightly smaller financial burden when graduating. The Institute for College Access and Success reported that out of all the Louisiana colleges with a four-year undergraduate program, the average Loyola graduate only had $22,713.56 in debt. For demonstrative purposes, a Loyola student’s debt cost as much as 2,754 lunches from the Orleans Room.
By comparison, the average graduate from Tulane University, Loyola’s next-door-neighbor, had $31,172 in debt. Dillard University had the highest average debt of $36,241 with 96% of students having some amount of debt.
But is all debt equally difficult to pay off for all students? For many students, paying off their debt is an afterthought to their college education, something that they can deal with when they graduate.
“Being a freshman, you’re more focused on school and getting grades. Student loans are currently something that everyone has to deal with, so no one’s really interested in paying them back right now,” Ballard said.
And for many undergrads, paying off student loans is as big a problem as finding a job after college. Many students opt to look for internships, which can serve as experience for working with other companies and organizations. But if jobs seem scarce and less obvious to find, some students end up working towards earning a higher degree in hopes of getting a better-paying job.
Ray Freire, music education graduate ’12, said that he plans to continue getting higher degrees to delay paying off his loans. “By the end of my senior year, I had about $33,000 in student loans. My after-college plan is to become a music teacher and find a good payment plan for my debt,” he said.
When Freire first attended Loyola in 2008, tuition for one semester was $13,584, not including room and board and other fees. Now that price has increased by approximately 25 percent. According to Freire, paying for just one year of college made his parents declare bankruptcy, leaving scholarships and loans as his only finance options.
But with the average student loan debt increasing along with tuition, how much money should a student take out for loans? According to student media advisor Mike Giusti, the total amount of loans a student takes out shouldn’t be more than their prospective first-year salary at an entry-level job. Determining the proper amount of money to take out
For this analysis, we researched the number of degrees given out at graduation and compared them with salary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to Loyola’s Common Data Set, the top 5 degrees for the 2012 graduation were:
1. Business Management and Administrative Services
2. Performing Arts
3. Psychology
4. Social Sciences
5. Mass Communication
With this information, we researched the Bureau of Labor Statistics data of all professions and their hourly wages. For fairness, we assumed that all professionals involved worked 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, then estimated how many hours someone in that field would have to work to pay off $22,713.56.
- Business Mgmt — $33.05/hr, $65,007/yr
- Social Sciences — $32.44/hr, $68,740/yr (includes Psych)
- Performing Arts —$ 26.58/hr, $55,288/yr
- Mass Comm–$25.96/hr, 53,998/yr
With these statistics in mind, the average business major would have to work for 678.25 hours, a social sciences major 700, a performing arts major 854.54 hr, and a mass communication major 875 hours to pay off their average debt in student loans. For comparison, the Lord of the Rings film trilogy clocks in at 9 hours, 18 minutes. In the time it takes to completely pay off $22,713.56, a business major could watch all three movies 74 times.
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