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Many Utah college students are staying away from college debt, but they seem to be working too hard to do so. And their graduation rates are low. This is the desperation many students apparently face in their efforts to avoid the debt burdens so many Americans face. In most cases there’s no easy way to avoid debt, but a lot of really hard ways. According to an article by Brian Maffly in the Salt Lake Tribune:
During a typical week, Realtor Dan Smuin drives all over the Salt Lake Valley showing homes, like a 5,000-square-foot place up Emigration Canyon with five bedrooms and lovely views of the path followed by 70,000 Zion-bound Mormon settlers a century and a half ago.
But he also spends up to 18 hours in a University of Utah classroom. He doesn’t get sleep and doesn’t socialize on campus, but he is almost finished with a degree in human development and family studies. Smuin will be among the 5,513 U. undergraduates receiving bachelor’s degrees this year — eight years after he began his studies at Salt Lake Community College. He worked 40 to 60 hours a week the whole time and is completing college without a penny of student debt.
Congratulations. People like Smuin are common in Utah. According to the article, while the average debt burden for college graduates is $25,250, the average Utah debt is only $15,509, the nation’s lowest. What’s more, only 44 percent of Utah’s college graduates even have debt, that’s the lowest percentage in the country.
About 68 percent of college graduates had education debt in 2010.
Not everyone thinks the no-debt plan is worth it, however. According to the article:
“A problem in Utah is we have a huge number of students working even though tuition is low,” Commission of Higher Education William Sederburg said. “You’re better off to go into debt and have a real college experience and not getting distracted on things that delay graduation.”
The accuracy of this statement remains a little unclear. While working a lot of hours (more than 20 hours a week) as a college student can cause students to drop out of college, it’s not really clear that the debt itself and “having a real college experience” is the best way to encourage students complete college faster.
That being said, the hard work plan isn’t much of a success either. The graduation rate for bachelor’s degree students in Utah is 51.5 percent. That means that only 51.5 percent of college students earn their bachelor’s degrees within six years. That’s among the lower rates in the country.
Nationally about 55 percent of college students earn their bachelor’s degrees within six years.
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bigtuna on April 13, 2012 4:57 PM:
umm... haven't read the article yet, but there is a very large part of the equation left out of the story. The Utah students also exceed national norms for being married and having children while in college. SO they juggle college, work, family/child rearing, and ... church duties.
So it is not just the work that makes for low grad rates, and long times to graduation...
Craigie on April 14, 2012 10:06 AM:
Big Tuna hits on something: Since the early 1990s, getting married and having a child are two of the fake ways to become an Independent, at least for federal aid purposes -- despite the reality that most of them are actually getting support from parents.
One way to slow the increase in the price of college is to rein in independency. In the 1970s and 80s it was primarily for emergency purposes, and financial aid officers used professional judgment. Then it was continually broadened so that, even for undergraduates, independents are now up to 65 percent of the pie. It is implausible, even in the cheapest parts of the USA, that people are living on the $3000 they put down as income on the FAFSA. Most are clearly getting income from parents or other relatives. In this day and age, the automatic independence for federal aid based solely on things like being 24, having a baby, being a veteran, etc., needs to be repealed. For starters, the era of the prototypical 18-22 year-old undergrad is long past.
Universal independency may appear to help the needy but it only complicates their lives. If you want to go to one of the College Board member schools, you need to file an additional Profile financial aid application for institutional aid. Those schools use the traditional 1980s definition of independence, that you need to show 7 years (10 in some cases) of not receiving any financial support from parents or other family members. Some expensive schools ask 50 year-olds going back to school for their masters degrees for parental income information.
There is a lot of talk about FAFSA simplification, but what use is a simple FAFSA if needy students have to file a separate form that is more complicated than a tax return to get in the front door of the classroom?
Besides the independency overreach, Congress added some (middle class) voter-friendly enhancements to the financial aid methodology in 1992 that need to be rolled back to restore the focus on the needy. Example #1 is adding value of the home back into the financial aid formula. The colleges want this data but it is not on the FAFSA because it is no longer asked. To identify who is truly needy, you need to look not only at income but also at assets. The exclusion of home value was possibly another factor in the housing bubble, as it provided an incentive for people to shift their assets into their home, which would not be counted for FAFSA purposes.
Crissa on April 17, 2012 1:06 AM:
I'm not sure I'm upset that someone took eight years to get their degree. It's not like they'd be earning this huge amount for four years and have been earning none the other four years - the student debt never works that way. Getting enough student loans to cover the education expenses, getting it to cover living expenses is nearly impossible.
However, 18 credits is considered a full-time student. As in, doing that for four years should get you a degree. But this guy had to cover a fulltime, adult-world job to pay for is and it took eight years?
That's a bit uncool.
Dave on April 19, 2012 12:25 PM:
@Craigie - How does reining in rules for federal aid lower the price of college? From the university's perspective, they're getting the same amount of money from you whether that comes directly out of your checking account or from Uncle Sam (or from some other source, i.e. your parents, your employer's tuition program, a bank providing you with a loan, a scholarship fund, etc.).
So the price itself is the same... you're simply saying that the burden of the price should be shifted away from government and towards the individual or the individual's family. That may be a valid argument... but nobody believes that if the federal government ended all aid tomorrow, colleges would suddenly cut their prices in half (or lower them at all).