Forty-six thousand, five hundred dollars. According to the Tufts admissions Web site, that is the jumbo-sized bill landing annually in the mailboxes of Tufts students and their families. The price of tuition has risen by $2,087 since last year.
Many students are able to offset this increasing cost through scholarships and grants: The Class of 2010 received $10 million total in grant money from the financial aid office, according to the admissions Web site. Not everyone is able to count on grants, though; 52 percent of all undergraduate students received no financial aid from Tufts in the 2005-2006 school year, according to the Tufts electronic bulletin.
Left with few options, some students left on the fringe have instead delayed the financial burden by taking out long-term college loans.
But, according to a recent AllianceBernstein Investments survey of recent college graduates entitled, "The College Debt Crunch," these students should be careful: Accumulating large debts in college can throw students into a vicious cycle of debt that may affect their lifestyles for years to come.
In the survey, which was conducted by AllianceBernstein Investments, Inc., 42 percent of respondents said "living paycheck-to-paycheck" described their lifestyle "very well," and 34 percent reported having sold personal possessions such as furniture, CDs and clothes to help pay the bills.
For recent graduate Ashleigh Bergeron (LA '06), who is now attending law school at Tulane University, college debts have filled her future with question marks.
"I've only had to make one loan payment thus far, and now I'm essentially living off of the loan refunds I've gotten for law school," Bergeron said. "But by the time I graduate from law school, I'll have accumulated over $200,000 in loans."
Bergeron explained that by attending law school she was able to defer all but one of her loan payments until she graduates. For the remaining loan, she claimed forbearance, which requires that the borrower is incapable of covering the loan due to unemployment or financial hardship, to delay making payments.
Bergeron said she's "definitely" worried about the future. "My monthly payments are going to be pretty high," she said, "and I would like to be able to pay off my loans sooner than expected."
To do so, Bergeron said, she will have to delay or possibly give up some of her life dreams.
"Even though I'm more interested in less lucrative areas of law, I'm going to have to put those interests aside for a while so I can pay off my loans," she said.
Bergeron had been hoping to work for a nonprofit organization advocating human rights, but will probably find a corporate job when she graduates law school. "I'm sure I'll be able to manage, but it's going to take a lot of budgeting and sacrifice," she said.
But Director of Financial Aid Patricia Reilly said Bergeron's situation is atypical for Tufts students. She explained that, while approximately half of all undergraduates received some loans through the financial aid program this year, most are federal loans. The distinction, she said, is important.
"There are two major types of loans that students have: federal student loans, such as Stafford Loans and Perkins Loans, and alternative loans, which are loans from private lenders," Reilly said in an e-mail.
The most common, federal Stafford loans, limit the amount of money students can borrow to $17,125 in four years, typically with a 10-year repayment plan. A maximum borrower, she said, would end up paying approximately $200 per month.
Reilly said that it is what the financial aid office calls "alternative loans" - loans from banks or private lenders - that can lead students to financial trouble.
"(Alternative) loans carry higher interest rates, have much higher loan limits and have the potential to impose a significant repayment burden to the borrower," she said. "Because these loans are often negotiated directly between the borrower and the lender, we have very little information about the level of current borrowing."
Reilly emphasized that "only a small percentage of Tufts undergraduates borrow private loans," which she attributed to the "generous financial aid program" at Tufts. However, she said that the number of students using private loans has "increased to some degree as costs (of attendance) have gone up."
According to the College Board's "Trends in Student Aid," students borrowed nearly $14 billion in private loans over the 2004-2005 school year. That number is a 734 percent increase from the amount borrowed in the 1995-1996 school year, when attendance costs were significantly lower.
However, not all graduates have faced loan payment problems after graduation. Meghan Bean (LA '06), who is attending graduate school at Northwestern, said she has been able to find help balancing her education costs through other channels.
"I actually feel more financially secure [in graduate school] than I did in college," she said. "There are ways to get funding, like applying for grants, and some of them come with a fairly substantial stipend."
Bean applied for, and is receiving, full funding for her graduate tuition, which lightened her financial burden. But she said that, without help, even relatively modest loan payments could severely upset her lifestyle.
"I think I could manage to pay back about $120 to $150 [per month]," she said. "Two hundred [dollars per month] would be doable, but it would be tough. Three hundred would be a problem."
According to the survey, those kinds of monthly payments can quash recent graduates' opportunities when they leave college, placing them in a hole they may never dig themselves out of. The survey showed that 39 percent of respondents with debt expected paying it back would take more than 10 years. Thirty one percent said pop music icon Madonna will be a grandmother by the time they finish paying off their college loans.
Reilly said there are options to help alleviate the problem when payments are hitting students' wallets too hard.
"Students who are having difficulty repaying their federal loans may be eligible to consolidate their loans," Reilly said. "Consolidation allows the borrower to combine loans from various programs, lock in the current interest rate and spread payment out for up to 20 years. Students who borrow significant amounts for graduate school often use this option."
According to the survey, though, long-term loans can also have negative consequences, lightening the load in the short run but prolonging the effects of debt.
Of those with debt, 44 percent said they had delayed buying a house due to financial worries, and 28 percent said they had delayed having children. Twenty-seven percent said they had delayed getting a dental or medical procedure because of their economic situation.
But for some students, like 2005 graduate Stephanie Albin, undergraduate debt isn't a problem at all. Albin has no undergraduate debts but is currently paying her way through medical school. "It hasn't been a hardship," Albin said, "and [if I had undergraduate loans] I would just have greater debt, but I would have taken out loans in that case as well."
Albin said her fianc?©, Matt Leeds (LA '05), took out substantial loans - and it was worth it. "He's been able to pay off his loans without a problem," she said.
Reilly felt similarly, citing a federal Stafford loan default rate of .03 percent. "The federal government calculates our default rate each year, which shows the percentage of students going into repayment who default on their loans," Reilly said.
"[The rate] at Tufts is less than one percent this year, which indicates that most Tufts student don't seem to find their student loan debt to be overwhelming," Reilly said.
