According to a report from Projectonstudentdebt​.org, Ferris State University is one of the four-year pub­lic insti­tu­tions in Michigan to have the high­est aver­age debt among grad­u­ates as of 2009.

The aver­age debt of a 2009 Ferris grad­u­ate is $34, 767 with a total of 76 per­cent of stu­dents leav­ing with debt. Two Ferris grad­u­ates dis­cussed their amount of debt and what steps they rec­om­mend for cur­rent and future stu­dents to take to avoid as much debt as possible.

Brandon Martinez, a 2010 grad­u­ate in new media print­ing and pub­lish­ing, said he left Ferris with around $43,000 in total stu­dent loan debt.

“About half of that was from hous­ing, the other half from tuition, give or take,” said Martinez.

Martinez’ loans are set to be com­pletely paid within a ten-year period, but he is hop­ing to get them paid off within five years by using income tax returns, chunks of sav­ings and mak­ing slightly larger payments.

Jim Connors, a 2011 grad­u­ate in chem­istry, said he is still in his grace period, but has approx­i­mately $60,000 in loans to pay back.

“Depending on how much I am able to pay monthly, I am antic­i­pat­ing pay­ing off my loans in about ten years’ time – hope­fully sooner if I can man­age larger pay­ments every now and again,” said Connors.

Connors and Martinez indi­cate there are mea­sures stu­dents can take to decrease their debt per­cent­age. Both of them agree that apply­ing for schol­ar­ships is ben­e­fi­cial and crucial.

“There are, lit­er­ally, hun­dreds of ran­dom schol­ar­ships avail­able to the most unique indi­vid­u­als, such as a $10,000 schol­ar­ship to some­one who went to prom wear­ing a duct-tape dress or a duct-tape tuxedo,” said Connors.

Connors said he found sim­i­lar schol­ar­ships on Fastweb​.com, a web­site that allows col­lege stu­dents to sign up for a free account and qual­ify for numer­ous schol­ar­ships based on a profile.

“The more you apply, the more oppor­tu­ni­ties you have,” said Connors.

Martinez said apply­ing for schol­ar­ships is an obvi­ous way to get assis­tance and that fig­ur­ing out liv­ing arrange­ments can help.

“It’s bad enough that we pay so much in tuition, but liv­ing costs are tough, espe­cially when you can’t get a full-time job because you are in school – and now that get­ting a bridge card is even more dif­fi­cult, money now has to be allo­cated to food as well as liv­ing expenses,” said Martinez.

Currently, hous­ing rates for the 2011–2012 aca­d­e­mic year can cost any­where from $4,327-$4,672 per semes­ter, which is $8,744-$9,344 for the year, which gen­er­ally includes a meal plan.

Martinez urges stu­dents to look into get­ting a job if they can and live off campus.

“If I had to do any­thing over again, it would have to be bet­ter plan­ning when it came to hous­ing. If I remem­ber cor­rectly, it was almost $900 a month for me to live on cam­pus. Granted, I was in mar­ried hous­ing,” said Martinez.

Connors also said to take com­mu­nity col­lege classes when­ever pos­si­ble and to make sure they are trans­fer­able to a uni­ver­sity. He also said sac­ri­fices may have to be made in order to get a job to help pay for col­lege and other expenses.

“Don’t be scared to work for a liv­ing,” said Connors.

The Torch attempted to con­tact Ferris’ finan­cial aid office to obtain data and infor­ma­tion on stu­dent loans and debt, but did not respond prior to press time.

Related Posts

No related posts.