The option to not attend college was never an option. My mother earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing. Dad had his in business administration. The grandmother whose husband left her with 4 children to raise alone, had a college degree. A long lineage aunts, uncles and older cousins impressed upon me that higher education is the truest way to fight against the inequities of being Black in America. “The only thing they can’t take away from you is your degree.”
When I was 16, my grandmother purchased a very thick and very heavy book that provided a snapshot of every college and university in the United States by location, student population, tuition, degree programs, sports teams, and notable alumni. The message was clear: the only choice I had when it came to college was which one I wanted to attend. As much as going to college was a forgone conclusion, paying for it with student loans was assumed. “We’re not rich, we’re comfortable”, Dad said. Often. Which meant, I had to work every summer to earn my spending money for the year. Money for things like student tickets to football games, my club soccer team expenses, sorority dues, meals outside of my university’s dining halls, my pager (I am old!), birth control pills from the local Planned Parenthood that my parents definitely didn’t know about, and Spring Break in Mexico. The blood, sweat, and oh so many tears from a summer job spent scraping gum off schoolchildren’s desks, deep cleaning bathrooms, and waxing floors yielded about $3,000 every summer. And I still came up short. Student loans bridged the gap between the things I wanted and things I needed. They supported tuition, housing, books, lab fees, on-campus dining hall meals, parking passes (and the subsequent parking tickets), and visits to the campus infirmary for the times I got strep throat, mono, or a UTI.
Every year, I filled out the FAFSA with no real understanding of the combination of subsidized and un-subsidized loans I was receiving. I only cared about that final amount going into my checking account to get me through the next academic year. When I was in college, laws were not yet in place for predatory credit card lending so I also had a credit card with $5,000 limit. By then, I was also working part-time in the university bookstore. With my student loans, credit card, and $350 per month from my job, I didn’t think I was comfortable, I thought I was rich!
Financial literacy was not a term I was familiar with, nor one anyone discussed with me. I’m certain the mounds of paperwork that came with the loans outlined repayment terms and annual percentage rates (APR), but I treated them then like we treat the Apple Terms of Service now, I simply didn’t read them.
I needed money.
They gave me money.
The end.
I was certain that one day I would have a professional career that would enable me to maintain the lifestyle to which I’d become accustomed and I’d have plenty of money to pay the loans back.
One day.
But I was a Psychology major and that almost always means graduate school. I’d made it through 4 years of undergrad, what’s 2 more years? Surely, a graduate degree was the path the yielding higher salaries in the future, right?
I completed my education with $50,000 in student loan debt from graduate school, $25,000 student loan debt from my undergraduate degree, and $15,000 in credit card debt.
My first job out of graduate school paid $33,000 (before taxes).
Choices I made over the course of 6 years has and will continue to be an anchor, sinking my finances. My ex-husband and I. were denied a home loan because of my debt-to-income ratio. I pay an insanely high APR% on my car loan. There’s a pit in my stomach anytime I get a new job and the employer runs a credit check as part of the onboarding process. I recently ran across a TikToker who was sued by her lender, which has introduced an entirely new and persistent fear. Oh, and student loans are the only thing that cannot be eliminated in a bankruptcy.
It’s taken a very long time, but all of my credit cards have been paid off. The undergraduate student loans have been paid. My graduate degree loans still sit on my shoulder like we old, angry, molting gray parrot, but I’ve finally gotten to a place financially where I can fully focus on that them. Ultimately, I will pay far more than I was lended, but that’s how this works when you don’t do your due diligence and stay informed.
Do I regret going to college? Absolutely not. I earned a master’s degree in Counseling with an emphasis in College Student Services. I had the opportunity to work with college students for more than 10 years and then transitioned to corporate work for 7 years where I was able to to support students in their first careers after college. I coached students on negotiating higher entry-level salaries, fully comprehend their organization’s retirement and investment programs like Roth IRAs, and made sure they are balanced the cost of living with salary when considering a new position.
Do I regret going to college? Heck, no. It was a way for me to try-on a variety of things in a safe place with low stakes. I changed my major 7 times and completed coursework in different degree programs because I was interested in so many careers. I landed in the one that combined my interests most completely. I enhanced leadership skills in my sorority. Working in the campus bookstore gave me experience in customer service, marketing and retail. College exposed me to people, ideas and experiences I never would have had otherwise.
Do I regret taking out student loans? Yes and no. I regret taking way more money than I truly needed. I regret not actively researching scholarship money or grants. I regret not understanding the long-term impact of deferments. On the other hand, I don’t regret taking the financial burden of my education off of my family. My sister has children and my brother was going to college after me, so the price of my education was something no one had to stress about. I also don’t regret sharing my experience if it helps you make better choices about your future.
