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Student borrowers find loan decisions costing plenty

Michael Haynes had lots of decisions to make during his freshman year at Eastern Michigan University — which classes to take, where to live, what books to buy.

Today, saddled with more than $80,000 in student loan debt, the 22-year-old senior wishes he’d spent more time deciding how to borrow.

“We’re too young to grasp that this is thousands of dollars I’m going to owe,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like real debt until a few years down the road — like now.”

Haynes is like many college students who find that grants, scholarships and work-study programs only go so far to cover tuition, room, board, books and supplies. Students carried an average $19,200 in debt in 2004, twice the amount they carried a decade before, according to The Project on Student Debt.

Thanks to soaring tuition costs, borrowing has become an inescapable fact of college life. Two-thirds of students at four-year colleges carried loan debt in 2004, compared with less than half in 1993, according to The Project on Student Debt.

“My first advice to families is save, save early ... work with your institutions to see what aid is available,” said Diane Jones, assistant secretary of post-secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education. “But understand that for many families, taking on debt is going to be part of the solution of meeting the cost.”

After being accepted at Eastern Michigan, Haynes followed his high school’s advice and applied for federal aid. But the process of filling out complex forms asking about his family’s financial assets overwhelmed him.

He ultimately borrowed from Chase, which was on a list of lenders the university provides students. Because the federal loan is capped at only a few thousands dollars per year, Haynes also borrowed from Sallie Mae, which tops another list of school-approved lenders.

The rate on the federal loans was between 4 percent and 5 percent. But the private loans carried rates between 8 percent and 12 percent. Haynes said he could have shopped around and switched, but by the time he understood his options, it was more convenient to stick with Sallie Mae.

Haynes described the school’s financial aid office as “very helpful,” even if the advice he got there wasn’t the best. He said the borrowing process is so daunting and time-consuming that it’s only natural to rely on colleges for advice on where to go for loans.

“I knew it was going to cost. I just didn’t get the depth of how big that cost actually is,” he said. “People tell me, ‘You’ll find a way to pay it. You’ll get a job.’ Now I’m looking at grad school and I’m like, ‘Here we go again.’ ”

Carmen Berkley, 22, had a similar experience. She said financial aid officers at the University of Pittsburgh gave her a brochure listing several lenders, but she wishes she had received more guidance.

The Georgia native, who graduated Aug. 3, took out several private loans with interest rates as high as 19.5 percent. She’s now carrying more than $70,000 of debt.

“No one really said, ‘Here are the interest rate options, this is what a deferment means, this is what paying the interest means right now,’ ” Berkley said.

On the Web:

Project on Student Debt

Department of Education student aid page

National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators