Dollars, Debts, and Degrees: My Experience with College Affordability

In this series, students and industry experts share stories and perspectives from inside the student debt crisis. Share yours here using #StudentDebt.

Money decided what college I would attend. Money determined where I would live. Money dictated what class I would take, and what books I would buy. 

Money has essentially touched upon every facet of my college experience from start to finish.

On June 10th, I became a proud UCLA graduate. I approached my graduation with the somber understanding that my ceremonial celebrations come at a pricey cost—loans and bills that will follow me for years to come.

I wasn’t financially irresponsible. On the contrary, I managed my money pretty well. But what I can’t deny is that money has been a prevailing force influencing my educational choices from day one, and as it turns out, I won’t be escaping from it any time soon. 

This is one story of how a 21st-century college student navigated the world of student debt. 

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Getting to college:

My school decision

My parents never considered setting aside a college fund for me. Their thinking followed the lines of, “we’ll deal with it when the time comes.” After all, having only one kid helped simplify their plans a whole lot—I was the only child they had to be responsible for. My family had strong educational values, and being Vietnamese American immigrants, my mother and father’s only goal was that I finish better in life than where they started. I couldn’t be more thankful for their sacrifices. 

I came from a middle-class background. I quickly learned during my college application process that this came with a lot of complexities. As financial aid packages came rolling in one after another, I noticed that I fell into a weird grey area where I wasn’t getting enough aid to pay for everything, but I was getting some. This strange dichotomy epitomized the dilemma that most middle-class students face: if you weren’t wealthy enough to afford everything or didn't fall into the lower income bracket to receive substantial aid, you were destined for debt.

Well, “destined” is a strong word. We all have some agency over our finances. I was fortunate to have plenty of resources available to me; I applied to almost every scholarship that my high school offered. The ones I ended up receiving were mostly one-time deals in which I collected the lump sum and that was it. (In the long run, this wasn’t very helpful.)

Ultimately, my school options were reduced to two: UCLA or USC. It wasn’t an easy decision. I initially had my eyes dead set on the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism; I worked incredibly hard on my application, earned admission, and even received the school’s Presidential half-tuition merit scholarship. I was going to be a journalist! But incredibly enough, even with half of my USC tuition paid for, I calculated that I was going to be thousands and thousands of dollars in debt—way over my head and beyond what a journalist could probably afford. I was agonized.

After extensively immersing myself within each school (and exhausting my calculator), I decided I would be a Bruin. UCLA’s atmosphere was right, the educational opportunities were great, and the loans weren’t going to hurt—as badly.

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Getting through college:

Work and paperwork

Financial independence was a woefully jarring experience. In all my years of schooling, I had just one high school teacher who thought it was appropriate to set aside a month to educate us on personal finance management. Otherwise, we were left alone to figure out the world of credit, taxes, and interest rates.

One would assume these are important things to know for any independent adult, but unfortunately financial literacy wasn’t a common privilege afforded to my predominantly immigrant community. Once I got to UCLA, they were the first things I had to learn.

To support my educational expenses, I applied for part-time jobs. Since October of my freshman year, I’ve held a job in some capacity for almost four years. The income was always meager but enough to pay for books, fees, and miscellaneous necessities (boba runs and food fundraisers were my weaknesses).

From time to time, I would hear about people waiting excitedly for their financial aid disbursements to process—they’d receive a couple hundred or even thousands of dollars in extra cash to spend—but I wasn’t one of them. My financial aid and my loans paid my tuition and any leftover funds went straight to my living expenses. I never complained though; this arrangement worked for me, even though I knew the loans were dubiously adding up in the background.

Then there was the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) every February. The paperwork to apply for financial aid was never too cumbersome, but it did require coordination with my parents to figure out how to input the right numbers for our taxes, income, etc. Every year I was able to earn some aid (the most important being the Cal Grant that covered my tuition), but the bombshell came my last year: my family’s income was a hair—and I do not exaggerate when I say a tiny, tiny hair—above the income ceiling allowed for the Cal Grant. It was absolutely devastating, mostly because it signaled the onslaught of more loans.

(Income ceilings are unforgiving. Situations like mine happen all the time because financial aid is more or less dealt in absolute terms. My hope is that we could move towards a system in which aid is granted based on a more flexible scale to accommodate families from all income backgrounds.)

Image: AP / U.S. News

I should note that during my second and third years, there was talk that the University of California would institute tuition hikes affecting students across the entire UC system. Numerous student movements and protests lobbied the UC to freeze tuition. It was a success: tuition remained the same the entire time I attended UCLA.

Throughout it all, my loans transformed into one mysterious entity. I knew I had them. I knew generally how much I owed. But altogether, my loans were dispersed in various different places and I couldn’t fathom having to untangle the bureaucracy needed to start paying them in the future. Unsubsidized loans, PLUS loans, private loans—where do I even begin? 

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Getting out of college:

To be hired

As I near the end of my college career, I’ve been working towards getting hired so that I can start my professional career, but also because I need to earn an income to start repaying my loans and support my family financially. (I’m happy to report that I’ve been offered to be a part of the prestigious Page Program at NBCUniversal post-graduation. I can’t wait to begin!) 

One of the first things I plan to do is to consolidate my loans. Like I mentioned before, they exist in too many different places, and I would prefer to deal with as little bills in the mail as possible. It would also make approaching my debt balance much more tangible. 

Taking a step back, I recognize that not all students will be graduating this spring with a job in hand. I was blessed to work at a few internships to get the experience I needed to earn a position, but spots are not easy to come by, and it definitely doesn't work the same way in every career field. The job market has been challenging and the prospects will get even tougher as more and more young people flood the workforce with each passing year.

It’s an issue that won’t be solved in a day, but it is a highly contentious issue when we consider that 2016 is a presidential election year. The candidate we ultimately vote to be president this year will oversee the job market we are graduating into, so it certainly is a big deal.

On the topic of student debt, I’ve heard overwhelmingly of one particular policy: Senator Bernier Sanders’s plan to make public college tuition-free. It sounds appealing. Whether the policy is feasible or not is not in my domain to comment, but the fact that any candidate is bold enough to suggest such a platform is admirable. Such a difference wouldn’t change the fact that I am leaving college with a trail of student debt behind me, but it would be a tremendous impact on the generations of students who follow after me. That alone is an important consideration for me as I go to the voting booth later this year.

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A privilege I had to afford

I’m humbled to have had the opportunity to obtain a college education. It’s a privilege I hold with great respect.

But when we speak of the privilege of education, what do we mean? That it’s built for the ones who can afford it? That it’s only made for those who have the resources to obtain it? 

To be sure, students have to work hard to “earn” an education. But I believe that no student should be deterred from earning a college degree just because of affordability. Students enter a university to learn and become better citizens—not to be profited from by government or private institutions.

My own college experience with money has been tumultuous. Having to consider money—its attainment, its use, and its borrowing—has twisted, shaped, and transformed the decisions I have made every step of the way, right onto the commencement stage.