College costs hit working class hard

By Chris Etheridge, Faryl Ury and Amanda Marquart

In less than a month, 2007 calendars will replace the faded images of this year's Dilberts, Bushisms and Sudoku puzzles.

But for American families with high school seniors, flipping the page to a new year not only brings personal promises and resolutions, but also the deep worry about bettering their children's future education.

Often the dream to see a child go to college does not come with the money to fulfill that wish. Students are graduating with more than $25,000 in debt – a figure that one financial advisor says can translate to close to $2 million in lost retirement savings.

Getting accepted to their school of choice is not the problem for many qualified students. High GPAs, long extra curricular resumes and solid entrance exam results usually result in an acceptance letter and sometimes a scholarship. But as the annual college application ritual comes to an end, the focus turns to the question: "Ok. I'm in. But how am I going to pay the bills?"

A combination of poor financial planning on the part of many parents, stiffened rules on financial aid programs and rising tuition rates at colleges nationwide are leaving more working class families behind.

A college degree has long been an essential tool for the nation's poorest families wishing to improve their financial futures. Today it is even more so.

"Having a high school diploma is not enough to support a family," said David Sullivan, a Chicago-based financial planner with MML Investor Services in Massachusetts. "Society should recognize that the most important thing we can do in the next 20 years is send as many people to college as we can."

But the common belief that the nation's most elite colleges and universities are inaccessible to students in working-class families is being replaced with the feeling that all schools—from state colleges to the Ivy League—are out of financial reach.

American colleges and universities like to tout their academic opportunities, student-professor relationships and superb facilities as the reasons to enroll. But for LaCharles Ward, 18, an Amundsen High School senior from the South Side who hopes to go to the University of Michigan next year, and many of his friends, the choice of which school to attend comes down to Econ 101: how much money they are going to get.

"They won't sign up for a school because it's too much money," Ward said of his friends. "Most of their concern is the cost."

Some students will simply ditch the dream. From 2001 to 2010, an estimated two million qualified students will have concluded that college is just not an affordable option for them, according to Empty Promises, a recent study by the U.S. Senate's Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance.

Without proper savings, students must turn to the loan industry, which is only too happy to promise them a college education in return for a monthly payment for at least the next 10 years. Procrastinating high school students and their cash-strapped families are continually tied to high interest rates and debilitating repayment rates.

"Private loans generally carry a much higher interest rate, and students are relying on them in larger and larger numbers as public grant aid has decreased over the past 10 years," said Emily Hawkins, Issue Campaigns and Campus Publications Manager for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for American Progress, in an e-mail. "The result is a great number of student borrowers struggling to pay off loans with very high interest rates. This is especially problematic for students with bad credit who are quoted even higher interest rates."

Sullivan said many parents are not doing enough to educate themselves about the cost of college. This lack of forethought can leave college graduates with debt that can set retirement investments back by as much as $1.7 million over the lifetime of the fund.

Student debt brings other issues.

"People are buying a home later and not starting a family," he said, citing several recent surveys on college graduates. "It's a vicious, vicious cycle."

AllianceBernstein Investments, a New York City-based financial service firm that studies trends in college financing, found in a 2006 study that:

• 44% of adults with student loan debt have delayed buying a house
• 28% have waited to have a child
• 27% have put off getting a medical or dental procedure done
• and 18% have postponed a marriage

Taking on debt

Any college student who has filled out the Federal Application for Student Aid (FAFSA) understands the drill: By early January they should know their parents adjusted gross income, their 2006 IRA income tax return and if their parents are eligible to file a federal and state 1040A or 1040EZ. Colleges use this essential information to consider how much assistance prospective students will receive in an ever-escalating financial quest for a degree.

Sullivan estimates that parents of a child born today probably need to put at least $150 a month into a savings plan to ensure that a newborn could go to college 18 years from now. This presents a challenge for low-income families, who are bringing home as little as $400 a week.

"The affordability crisis is limited almost entirely to students from families in the bottom half of the parental income distribution, below $62,240," according to public policy analysis from the national education advocacy organization Postsecondary Education Opportunity.

This prospect has Julie Riesco, who has a son at Illinois' Northeastern University and a daughter about to graduate from high school, more than a little worried.

The Andersonville resident emigrated from Mexico with her mother and four siblings in 1972 with nothing but "the clothes on our back." Her mother and father operated a grocery store in Mexico and hoped to build a future doing the same in the United States.

Now the Riesco family has decided to go back into the grocery business – in addition to the work they already do operating housing properties – to help pay for their children's education. She says the family will still have to borrow more money beyond the $10,000 she and her husband have already borrowed for her oldest son's education.

Riesco never thought about financial planning when she was raising her family.

"We never really had any money," she said. "We never really had any concept of the importance of saving for college."

She hopes that, when it comes time to send her grandchildren to school, the situation will not be the same.

"What's wonderful about life is you always have a chance to learn," she said. "I will start college funds for my grandkids when they are babies."

But if recent trends in tuition rates continue – nationwide analysis by The College Board, an education research organization, shows that the cost of college has risen by more than 11 percent – paying for a secondary education will only get more difficult.

College tuition has risen at a rate much greater than inflation and family income.

From 1994 to 2005, the nation's average college tuition has grown at a rate more than double that of inflation, according to another study by AllianceBernstein Investments. Skyrocketing tuition leaves more graduating high school seniors with limited options.

And the massive loans current students are taking out shows that parents 18 years ago were not able to save much either.

Tim Schenck, who is the only college counselor for 304 seniors at Chicago's Amundsen High School, said many families may take every possible step to set aside enough cash to pay for their children's education, but still fall short of covering the bill.

"Some of the parents have been saving," he said. "But when I ask the kids how much, they say a couple thousand dollars – that's unrealistic."

Nationally, the average student takes on $27,500 in debt, Sullivan said. At Chicago State University, the figure is $23,000, according to Brenda Hooker, director of financial aid.

But it could be even lower if students were more diligent with their financial aid applications, she said.

"Students here aren't applying early enough," she said.

Grants available at the school are limited and students who apply early often get a better shot at getting more financial aid. Hooker says she wants to see applications come in as early as Jan. 2, the first day next year's applications are accepted.

Legislative changes

Financial aid reform was a key campaign issue for Democrats in many congressional elections this year, and Nancy Pelosi, the incoming speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, has put the issue on her "first 100 hours" agenda – a list of reforms she hopes Democrats can pass through Congress in the first few days after taking control in
January.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan eating so much of the federal budget, limits are placed on non-defense related spending. Legislators therefore found it difficult to make education policy changes this year. Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate have put an end to voting on spending bills for Fiscal Year 2007.

To help students pay for college, federal lawmakers instead are focusing on student loan companies.

U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who will become chairman of the Senate's education committee, is, for example, expected to propose the "Student Loan Sunshine Act," which would require colleges and lenders make their student loan agreements with students more transparent.

"Going to college is hard enough. Students shouldn't have to worry about being exploited when they take out student loans," Kennedy said in a statement. "At a time when families are pinching pennies more than ever to afford college, we need to ensure that students are getting the best rate on their student loans."

Although the Higher Education Act prohibits financial relationships between loan companies and colleges, legislators suspect this provision is widely abused when universities designate "preferred lenders" to students in exchange for gifts and other compensations from student-loan groups.

The Sunshine Act would force colleges to disclose to the federal Department of
Education any gifts they receive from student loan companies, while also requiring loan companies to report any gift exceeding $10 given to colleges.

In February, Illinois legislators added $34.4 million to the Illinois' Monetary Award Program (MAP) for fiscal year 2007, increasing MAP funding by 10 percent. The program grants up to $4,968 to low-income undergraduate students attending public or private colleges.

"Tuition stabilization is important, but as an investment, MAP has the most impact in broadening access and making sure financial hurdles are not a barrier to low-income students," said Donald Sevener, director of external relations for the Illinois Board of Higher Education. "For IBHE, increasing the need-based MAP is a top budget priority."

Illinois legislators also debated a bill in February that would protect students whose state education loans are sold to private companies.

The proposal, which will be considered again in January 2007, would require that any student loans sold to a private lender earn the same interest and fee rate originally set by the state.

Regardless of what changes to law may be made in the future, Janny Leung, a personal college assistant with Chicago–based Application2Graduation, said that a bachelor's degree is still worth the investment.

"If a student is willing to do whatever it takes," she said. "He or she can make it."