I mostly don't read or talk about student loans and the PSLF program because it's a shortcut to panicked paralysis but today let me share my story about debt, grad school, and public service. 1/ twitter.com/saragoldrickra
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My family circumstances made it possible for me to graduate with my B.A. only $5k in debt (I went to a school where my father worked on staff + lived at home to keep expenses down). So I began the grad school search/application process not very deep in a hole. 2/
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Between college and grad school (about 2 years) I worked at jobs that paid hourly wages of maybe $7.50-$10/hour. I had worked part time for about 10 years at that point and $10 hour seemed grand! 3/
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I had low expenses because I didn't have kids, wasn't maintaining a house or a car; I lived with my parents. I started paying down that $5k. I saved some money for the transition to grad school. Most people don't have the family resources and support to do these things. 4/
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I was warned, applying for grad school, that student loans were likely inevitable. I was looking at MA/MLS programs and was told the $$$ goes to PhD students. 5/
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I chose a private school for my grad program for educational rather financial reasons. I wanted to get out of Michigan for a while and the program offered an integrated archives-history track with small cohorts that sounded like a good fit. 6/
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In retrospect I didn't have much experience cost comparing. I had never shopped for an undergrad -- I went where tuition was free. So I was naive. But I was also encouraged to pick based on the program not the cost. 7/
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When I got the financial aid package there was some merit based scholarship money ... and a projected $60k in student loans for the four-year of the program.
Scary numbers I had no basis for evaluating. 8/
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Another reminder that I was a white, middle class young adult who was a third generation college graduate with PhDs in my extended family. Many people go through this with way less cultural competency in higher ed. 9/
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This meant, too, that I had been encouraged by all of the adults in my life to value educational experiences as a good in and of themselves if they supported the work of making a meaningful life and contributing to the collective good. 10/
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I actually still believe that. But it is a moral/ethical value that exists uncomfortably alongside the skyrocketing expense of higher education. 11/
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So. I get the aid package and am at sea trying to evaluate it. My father has a colleague who does financial advising and offers to go over the numbers with me for free (again, something most people do not have in their lives). 12/
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I put together a spreadsheet of projected income and expenses. The financial advisor is impressed I can spreadsheet! He looks over my numbers and the takeaways from our conversation are these: 13/
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1. Educational debt is an investment.
2. The 1st year of grad school will likely be most expensive, and I will find ways to reduce loans borrowed in subsequent yrs.
3. The best practice was not to take out more in loans than I could expect to earn as an annual salary. 14/
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Oh, and also the recommendation that I stick to government vs. private loans. 15/
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I took his advice, bit the bullet, and decided to accept the offer of admittance. It was scary, but I felt I had done my due diligence and no one had raised red flags so I pressed forward. 16/
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And during graduate school I was able to reduce the amount I accepted in loans each year. I worked multiple jobs (that paid $12 and even $14/hour!), accepted stipended TA work, and shared a 500sqft apartment with a roommate (later girlfriend/wife). 17/
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As I have written about before, the reality of taking on debt -- I had never even failed to pay off my credit card balance each month! -- was physically toxic to my system. I was so humiliated by student loan debt I woke up nauseated every day for the better part of year one. 18/
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Living in Boston is fucking expensive. In my hometown, the apartment that I had shared with a roommate in college cost $500/month. We each paid $250. 😂 I knew Boston would be $$$ but there's a difference between knowing on paper and writing a rent check for $1250/mo. 19/
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But Boston is/was where my graduate program was, and it is/was where my job (and my wife's job) opportunities are/were. There was no way we could pay living expenses on $12-14/hour. So loans were a necessity even when working full-time + school. 20/
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While I was in graduate school, the 2008 financial crash happened. NO ONE was hiring. We all felt lucky not to be let go (if we weren't let go). It was around this time that one of my colleagues made me aware of the PSLF program. 21/
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This was before anyone, anywhere had been making payments for the necessary ten years to apply for forgiveness. The criteria seemed opaque but we puzzled through the fine print and concluded our non-profit cultural institution was likely a qualifying employer. 22/
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THANK GOD there might be light at the end of the tunnel. A safety net by which the low-paying jobs in our field (libraries, archives, and museums) were recognized as a public good and the financial burden we were all carrying in order to do that service work might be lifted. 23/
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Notice I say "might." We were all wary of the PSLF program because it seemed too public-spirited to be true in the age of government austerity. It was way too uncertain a possiblity, way too far in the future, to make any major decision based upon a "might." 24/
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Just as I was going on the full-time, post-grad school job market in earnest, I was offered a promotion to full-time at my current workplace. The starting salary was $34k/year. 25/
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So the realities of the financial situation were this: I could accept a full-time job with colleagues I felt good working with, doing work I felt good about, in a shitty job market and enroll in an income-based repayment plan OR 26/
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I could keep looking for a job, perhaps even in other sectors I wasn't trained for, that would allow me to pay off my student loans in 10 years (let's remember I had/have a partner who also has student loan debt we are jointly responsible for). 27/
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And remember that my wife and I work in an entire industry -- non-profit, cultural heritage work -- where staff are chronically underpaid in relation to their training and the financial investment they were encouraged to put into that education. 28/
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Have I been encouraged to maintain my "lifestyle" of working at a non-profit cultural heritage institution that is in basic alignment with my values because of the possibility that someday, maybe, the federal government would forgive my student loan debt? 29/
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Ideally -- ideally -- I would argue that a) the costs of education should be socialized so students weren't taking on astronomical amounts of personal debt to equip themselves for their jobs. 30/
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And b) the wages paid to entry-level workers in any industry -- but perhaps particularly the non-profit / public service worlds -- should align with the expenses incurred to train + the money required to be financially secure. 31/
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