HippoPress -- The Hippo -- Guide to Manchester and Nashua NH

The New Hampshire Public Interest Research Group (NHPIRG) released a report in July comparing the rise in the amount of debt students must repay after graduation to the rise in the cost of living for the years 1993 to 2004. Nationally, student debt rose 107 percent in that period, from an average of $9,272 per student with loans to $19,210. At the same time, the cost of living in the Boston-Nashua area — defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the counties of Bristol, Essex, Hampden, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, Suffolk and Worcester in Massachusetts; Hillsborough, Merrimack, Rockingham and Strafford in New Hampshire; York in Maine; and Windham in Connecticut — rose 37 percent. Medical expenses for the same region rose 74 percent.

Erika Staaf is NHPIRG’s advocate and worked with the group’s education fund to compile the report, though she is not the author of the document itself. The seven-page report, entitled “Student Debt and Consumer Costs in the Boston-Nashua Area,” will be published at www.nhpirg.org.

Q: I want to just make sure I get the general gist of the report. Between 1993 and 2004, there was an increase not just of students in college but a larger percentage of those students graduated with debt, and each student had more debt, correct?
That is the general gist of it. The biggest number is that there was an increase in debt of 107 percent.

Why is student debt a bad thing?
Graduating students used to have a bright future in front of them — it was their ticket to doing really whatever they wanted. And this is holding them back in some cases from doing that. For instance, we released a report several months ago that showed that students are now graduating with such high levels of debt — on average $20,000 worth of debt — that they’re sometimes unable to take jobs in lower-paying, entry-level positions that are really important for communities, like teaching, like social work, like media work sometimes. It’s growing at such a rate as other costs are increasing as well, especially in the Nashua-Boston area, in the southern New Hampshire area. Health costs are increasing too, so combined with that, it’s really limiting people.

The report compared national student debt with regional cost of living increases. Are there any data regarding student debt just for the Boston-Nashua area?
We don’t have access to that. The reason that we were able to single out the Boston-Nashua area is because that’s how the consumer price index breaks things down ... Anyone graduating from a school across the country would have a harder time living in New Hampshire.

And the cost of living here is higher than most of the rest of the country, right?
It’s growing at a higher percentage ... The cost of living here is growing by 37 percent [from 1993 to 2004]. I think across the country it was a few percentage points lower.

Do you know if the government makes any money from student loans?
There needs to be more needs-based grant aid going to students to help offset the cost of their college education.

Rather than just loans, you mean?
Yeah. So, for instance, the federal Stafford loan has stagnated at $4,050 per year since the last decade or so. That’s forcing students and their parents to have to turn to more private loan companies, which are sometimes unregulated, and that can be very dangerous as well. Whether or not the federal government is benefiting or colleges are benefiting from these loans, the real matter is that … as college costs and tuition have increased over the last decade, federal need-based grant aid needs to increase along with it. That’s just one option that we’re proposing.

Yeah, you have a couple suggestions in your report — increase grant funding, reward colleges for keeping tuition down. Is there anything that individuals can do when they’re either looking to find a way to pay for college or dealing with the debt they get afterward?
One thing would be to research before you go into any kind of application process, find out what your options are. From what I’ve heard, financial aid offices, if you actually give them a call and talk to them, they can be very helpful. But the sad reality is that individuals really don’t have much they can do. Right now there are, like I said, more and more students and parents are having to turn to private lending agencies that are often unregulated, have high interest rates, really just taking advantage of folks who might not know any better.

The word “usurious” was used in the report. Great word.
Exactly! Research and prevention is probably the best thing that students and their parents can do ... Another thing we’re calling for is incentives for both state government and for individual universities and colleges to lower their tuition or keep their tuition at reasonable levels.

Yeah, because that’s really gone up in the past 10 or 12 years.
It really has. I understand it’s a very complex system ... there are costs that colleges need to be spending on, but if there can be incentives in place for them to keep the tuition lower, that would be a really great way to save consumers a lot of money.

— John "jaQ" Andrews

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