For Immediate Release
CONTACT: Arielle Kuperberg / UNC Greensboro / atkuperb@uncg.edu
March 24, 2021, Austin Texas
In the past 30 years, the percentage of students at 4-year colleges who take out loans to finance their education has grown from less than half to a full two-thirds, and their average debt load – in constant dollars – has nearly doubled. In 2017, researchers asked students what they expected to get from college and how they thought college debt would affect them. In 2020, the researchers asked a subset of those who had graduated how their expectations had matched reality and how their lives would change if their loans were forgiven.
Their findings are summarized in a report, “The Difference Debt Makes: College Students and Grads on How Student Debt Affects Their Life Choices — and What They Would Do Differently if it Were Forgiven,” authored by Arielle Kuperberg of UNC Greensboro and Joan Maya Mazelis of Rutgers University-Camden. The report combines survey results published in Sociological Inquiry with follow-up surveys prepared especially for the Council on Contemporary Families
In some ways, the undergraduates surveyed in 2017 over-estimated the extent to which their college debts would burden them. But in other ways they gained less from the loans they took out than they had expected. Fewer reported being forced to work at jobs they did not like or having to live with parents or roommates to pay off their debts than had anticipated these outcomes back in 2017. But only 21 percent of graduates in the 2020 follow-up reported they had been able to get a better job because of their degree. Nearly one-fifth (18 percent) of graduates reported they could not buy a house because of their loans, while 22 percent said they had foregone or delayed graduate school because of their loan debt.
The combination of college debt and Covid-19 also affected the family decisions of graduates the authors surveyed. Almost one-fifth said they were delaying marriage until their loans were paid off, and 20 percent were delaying children.
Asked what they would do if their loans were forgiven, both the students surveyed in 2017 and the graduates surveyed in 2020 gave similar answers: Almost three-fourths said they would put the money in savings, and more than half said they would save up to buy a house. Among graduates, two-thirds said they would use that money to pay off other debt, and almost 53 percent would save for retirement. About 20 percent said they would get married or have children sooner.
For Further Information
Arielle Kuperberg, Associate Professor of Sociology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
atkuperb@uncg.edu 201-681-2382
Joan Maya Mazelis, Associate Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University–Camden
mazelis@camden.rutgers.edu 856-225-6468
Links
Brief report: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/college-student-debt-brief-report/
Press release: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/college-student-debt-release/
Full study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soin.12416/
About CCF
The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the University of Texas-Austin, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions.
The Council helps keep journalists informed of notable work on family-related issues via the CCF Network. To join the CCF Network, or for further media assistance, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223.
March 24, 2021
