Editorial:
College debt is a sizable problem

It’s a vicious cycle. A degree from a four-year college is supposed to lead to a job, and jobs, as we all know, mean money. But in order to obtain such a degree, one must shell out at least four years’ worth of ungodly tuition payments, only to end up hip-deep in debt before ever seeing that coveted degree.

Even for those of us who are lucky enough to have scholarships and grants to ease the pain of college payments, working toward a diploma from Rider University isn’t exactly a wallet-friendly endeavor. We all cringe at the $32,000 price tag that’s attached to each college year. Yes, Rider’s a private institution. Yes, we’re getting a respectable education. Yes, we’ll eventually reap the monetary benefits of being college-educated adults.

But is this all worth attending a university that leaves its students in some pretty monstrous debts?

According to U.S. News and World Report, of the universities that offer both undergraduate and graduate classes in the northern quarter of the country, Rider is number two in terms of leaving its graduates with the most debt. Sixty-eight percent of our graduates leave this institution with an average debt of $30,519. This means that Rider’s freshest crop of alumni start off in the hole before they even step foot into the role of a contributing member of the college-educated working society.

Sure, it’s easy to dismiss paying off college debts as a large-scale problem that is certainly not peculiar to Rider University. But that’s not going to make it any easier for us to deal with the burden of paying off college loans while trying to succeed in whatever careers we choose for ourselves, nor does it make it any better that our University has earned itself a place in national ranks for its role in student debts.

The prevailing complaint of the graduates who find themselves battling with the post-graduation downside of loans is the fact that they felt thoroughly unsure of how to properly finance a college education. We go to college in order to prepare ourselves for our futures. Since paying off college debts is one of the first realities to hit us, it should be the responsibility of our University to help make that first hurdle of adulthood a little easier to overcome. Seeing as the vast majority of us have never been college students before, we simply don’t know how to navigate our way through the maze of Stafford loans and private loans, researching how to get the most from out loans and actually applying for loans once we’ve figured out the system. Additionally, there are students who are either paying their own way through college or whose parents never went to a four-year college, so they don’t even have parental knowledge or assistance to help make sense out of loans and the best way to avoid unreasonably large amounts of student debt.

Rider gives out over $27 million a year in scholarships and grants based on individual students’ merits and needs; however, this is often merely the difference between not being able to afford a Rider education and just barely being able to afford a Rider education. Until then, we have to grin and bear it and hope that future college students will learn how to start saving well before they embark upon their higher-education
adventures.