Sticker Shock: $900 Monthly Student Loan Payment?

The opening to this New York Times story about student loan debt is chilling:

Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter.

“If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Ms. Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith.

But the actual villain of the first page might be Ohio Northern University:

“When [Kelsey Griffith] visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams rather than obsess on the sticker price.” [Emphasis added.]

“When I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.”

As we wrote on Friday, there are many elements conspiring against students, locking them into tremendous debt loads that they can’t possibly hope to repay. The wide-open job market has become a rare breed of unicorn in many aspects, and students are rarely presented with a “Here’s what you’re going to pay when you graduate” statement along with a “Here’s what you’ll likely earn as a graduate” statement.

There’s also this peculiar sense of American Entitlement:

• I deserve to go to any college that will accept me, regardless of the cost
• I deserve to pursue any major I want with the money I’ve borrowed, regardless of the usefulness of said major
• Community college is a step down as an undergrad — better to go straight to an expensive four-year university
• It’s better to pursue my dream than obsess over the sticker price
• Someone other than I will be responsible for my $900-a-month student loan payment because I’ll be paying rent, transportation costs, cell phone bills, food, and clothing out of the just-about-minimum-wage-job I’ve had to take as a recent college grad at Starbucks

When we’re looking to assign responsibility and allocate blame, the great thing about student loans is: there’s enough to go around. Admissions departments should not be encouraging undergrads to not obsess over sticker price. High school students should be taught useful math functions like calculating interest and loan repayments before they’re set loose on a financial aid form. Parents should be clear-eyed about what they can and can’t afford to do for their child as far as financing higher education. We ALL should be spending with money we have, not money we think we’ll have.

The New York Times article is six pages, but definitely worth your time when you can spare it.