Ohio students decry monstrous student debt

By COLLIN BINKLEY

The Columbus Dispatch

As Rachael Collyer painted her face a zombie mess of purple and black paint Friday, she kept thinking about the student debt she is racking up at Ohio State University.

“I look scary, but what’s scarier is how much I owe,” said Collyer, 21, a senior from Cleveland Heights studying English and Spanish. “I owe them $23,000 right now.”

Collyer was one of seven students from around Ohio who dressed up as zombies and shambled across the Oval at Ohio State to highlight the struggles of paying off student debt.

Puns were plentiful: Their signs warned of “walking debt” and stressed that “debt is forever.” They laughed as they limped across campus drawing strange looks. But when they spoke, they became serious.

“It’s really stressful. It’s something that keeps me awake sometimes,” Collyer said. “I would imagine I will be paying this off until I am in my 30s.”

Lexi Oswald, a senior at Kent State University, said she expects to be $80,000 in debt from student loans by the time she graduates. She’s paying for college on her own and has taken out loans to cover her tuition and housing costs. If she doesn’t land her dream job in public health after college — she works at a frozen-yogurt shop now — she worries about how she will pay off her debt.

“I have that constant fear,” said Oswald, 22, of Cleveland.

The Halloween-themed political message was organized by the Ohio Student Association, a social-justice group. Students in zombie garb gathered on other Ohio campuses, too, to rally for the event.

At Ohio State, they passed out pamphlets comparing candidates in the upcoming election. They didn’t endorse candidates, but students said politicians need to focus on student debt.

“We need to use our voter power to hold these people accountable,” Collyer said.

Nationally, 71 percent of students who graduated from four-year colleges in 2012 left with debt from college loans, and they owed an average of $29,400 per student, according to the Project on Student Debt, a research effort by the nonprofit research Institute for College Access & Success.

Between 2008 and 2012, total debt at graduation — combining federal and private loans — increased by 6 percent each year, the nonprofit group reported in December.

Numbers in Ohio were similar. Among students who graduated from a public or private college in 2012 here, 69 percent had student debt. Those with debt averaged $29,037. Only six other states had a greater percentage of students in debt, and only eight others had higher average debt.

At the same time, tuition costs have continued to rise in Ohio.

Eleven of the 13 four-year public universities in Ohio increased the price of tuition for this year, although the state imposed a 2 percent limit on those jumps. University leaders have said that long-term decreases in state funding left schools to put a greater burden on students.

The state budget for higher education this year is an inflation-adjusted $978 million less than it was in 2000, state data show, a 30 percent decline.

In September, the Ohio Faculty Council called on schools to do a better job telling students and families how much they should expect to pay for different courses of study.

“But we also need to invest more, not less, in higher education through state support of public institutions and through the expansion of scholarship and grant programs,” wrote Dan Krane, a Wright State University professor who heads the council of faculty at Ohio public colleges.

Students at the zombie rally echoed that message.

Nick Bates, a 30-year-old Columbus resident who is still paying off student debt, called for more financial support from the state for colleges and for student grants. His loan payments are taking away money that could go toward retirement and his son’s future college costs, he said.

“It affects us all as a society,” Bates said. “It’s holding a lot of young people back.”