Editorial: Student loans: Needlessly complex

Do you know how much you owe on your student loans?

If the question boggles you, you’re not alone. According to a 2014 survey conducted by the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings Institution, six out of 10 freshmen do not know how much debt they had taken on to pay for their first year of college.

Student loans have quickly become a maze of confusion, and students often find themselves bewildered by the specifics of their loans and the options they have for repayment. The government should address the complexity of student loan programs and require colleges to properly educate students prior to allowing them to take out a loan.

The confusion surrounding the loan process — and the frustration that results —  is highlighted by nearly 2,000 comments published by The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that were received through their student loan complaint system.

And yet, resources that can help students navigate the world of student loans do exist — and many can likely be found on their own campuses.

Pitt’s Office of Admissions and Financial Aid website hosts information covering options for repayment, the consequences of failing to repay your debt and how to deal with any issues you may have with repayments. However, this information is presented as a post-graduation resource — not as information that aids students in making the initial decision to take out a loan.

The process that a student must undergo prior to taking out a loan is not designed to help them understand their repayment options nearly as well. For example, to receive a Stafford Loan — the most widely used student loan program for both undergraduate and graduate students, according to Pitt’s Admissions and Financial Aid website — students are required to sign a Master Promissory Note and complete an Entrance Interview.

This is a jargon-filled process that requires students to educate themselves on the loan they are taking out and leaves them ill-prepared to consider future hardships.

Last week, an article in the New York Times’ Upshot blog brought this miseducation to light when it described an anomaly in college education financing — students with smaller debts are more likely to default on their loans than those who have larger debts. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 51 percent of students who defaulted on their loans owed less than $10,000. The problem, the article identified, was that students who spent less time in college took on less debt. As a result of their lack of degree, they were less financially able to pay their loans back.

But unbeknownst to many students, the United States has income-based repayment options in place to address the problem of students saddled with debt they cannot afford to pay back.

In fact, only 19 percent of Direct Loan — the sole source of federal education loans since 2010 — borrowers were enrolled in the program, according to the article.

This means that students were not taking full advantage of options like Income-Based Repayment (IBR), Pay As You Earn and public service loan forgiveness, which take into account what an individual earns when making payment plans.

Students do have options available to them should they find themselves unable to shoulder their student loans.

It’s just a matter of making sure that they can find and understand them.