Student loans reach an all-time high

Photo by Abby Bellow

 

Student loans in the United States have reached an all-time high of $1.2 trillion. For Oklahoma Christian University students, however, the student loan debt has decreased in the last year.

Director of Student Financial Services Clint LaRue said the debt increase in the United States has not had an affect on Oklahoma Christian graduates and current students.

“We’re not seeing a negative trend in borrowing from our students,” LaRue said. “We’re also seeing from some of our data that less and less students are defaulting and that some students are doing a good job about repaying their loans too. I think on a greater societal perspective, it is problematic.”

LaRue said that Oklahoma Christian students are paying back their debts at a reasonable pace. The time that students have to start paying their loans is six months after they graduate college.

Since 2008 the student loans in the United States have increased by 84 percent, outdoing home equity loans/ lines of credit, credit card debt and automotive debt. In Oklahoma the average student debt is $23,636, which is 20 percent lower than the national average of $29,400. Oklahoma is the second-highest number of late loan payments with 13.2 percent.

LaRue said the student loans have decreased at Oklahoma Christian for various reasons.

“I think it’s because there [are] probably more people who are more in debt at first,” LaRue said. “Dave Ramsey talks about not taking any student loans. And whether I agree or disagree, I think that has an impact on people who pay for them. And then I think there [are] more students who come here from families that have the means to pay for them to go to school without having to pay for student loans. So it may be the fair gap whatever the case might be.”

LaRue said the decrease in loans at Oklahoma Christian has helped students who have graduated with their post-graduate finances.

“They have a better financial journey after college,” LaRue said. “They don’t have to use their income to pay for student loans as much. So it allows them to do other things that they might want to do and that’s a very good thing.”

LaRue also said the personal finance class taught by Kent Hartman has helped students and Hartman receives positive reviews from students.

Junior Sergio Soto transferred to Oklahoma Christian University from North Carolina last year and he will have to pay back accumulated student loan debt after he graduates.

“I kind of started there in 2008 and 2009 then transferred,” Soto said. “But once I got my basics out of the way and started to work I transferred back.”

Soto said at one point it started to affect his student loans.

“I started working one semester and didn’t go to school for more than six months,” Soto said. “You have you start paying it six months in, no matter what.”

In regard to being a student while paying off student loans Soto replied that it is not a problem at this time.

“It is something that we have to deal with,” Soto said.

Soto is currently on scholarships at Oklahoma Christian and that is where the loans started having an effect.

“With all the scholarships that I had my first year at OC… we needed student loans to helps us pay up the rest,” Soto said.

Depending on when he starts working it could take a while for Soto to pay off his student loans.

“At least 10 years,” Soto said.

First year student Lance Littlewood is on scholarship but has student loans as well. He said he is not worried about paying off the loans.

“I’m doing a Christian engineering scholarship this year so I just have to wait for that to kick in,” Littlewood said. “Mainly my junior and senior years will be covered so I’m not too worried about student loans just because I know I’ll only have student loans from my freshman year and a few my sophomore year, But it hasn’t really affected much so far, since I’m doing engineering I’m not too worried about getting a job afterwards.”

Going to a university where the amount of student loan debt has decreased in the past years helps put students like Littlewood at ease.

“It helps that I won’t have to pay back as much,” Littlewood said.