Loan Repayment from NIH

I've written about this before, but it bears constant repeating that you can get the NIH to repay up to $70,000 in student loans. How? By doing research that fits within the following categories:

Pediatric Research
Health Disparities Research
Contraception and Infertility Research

As a graduate of a state school that offered me little in the way of funding (the long term consequences of which I was too naive to consider when I started my graduate studies), I owe a LOT of money. But lucky for me as a comparative primatologist who is interested in pregnancy and developmental programming, I can make a case for one of these awards. This time around I will be drawing on my research on the developmental origins of pregnancy loss in adult female marmosets to apply for funds from the Contraception and Infertility Research division. These are competitive awards but the relatively good news is that funding rates are decent, hovering around 35%.

Applications are due November 15. Get cracking.

For-profit colleges and the threat of a new bubble

Please read Sen. Tom Harkin's essay in the LA times on the growing concerns over for-profit college loan defaults.

Some thoughts on this issue from BANDIT member Sean Dougherty (who sent me the above link):
"There is some concern that the for-profit "schools" practice of acquiring loans for students with little hope of recovering from the debt will lead to a credit crisis akin to the subprime loan crisis. On a more personal level, since I teach at a technical college that serves urban, non-traditional students, I have seen several casualties of the for-profit system. They make their way through the for-profit program only to discover one or all of the following: their degree is unaccredited and worthless; their credits won't transfer to any accredited school; the classes did not prepare them; the per class cost was actually more than the state university that they thought was "too expensive"; they've acquired enough debt to prohibit or limit further student loans for another school. And, unfortunately, these students who are single mothers at the poverty level have very few options for getting out of debt, or affording educational alternatives. So, the hope for socio-economic mobility that they had invested in their for-profit education just becomes another contributing factor of their downward spiral.

I just wish people would realize that if the school is in a strip mall, it's probably not a school."

Government Vastly Undercounts Student Loan Defaults

Default rates on student loans are higher than recent federal government estimates, according to this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

"According to unpublished data obtained by The Chronicle, one in every five government loans that entered repayment in 1995 has gone into default. The default rate is higher for loans made to students from two-year colleges, and higher still, reaching 40 percent, for those who attended for-profit institutions."

"By any measure, for-profit colleges account for a disproportionate share of student-loan defaults. Two years into repayment, 11.9 percent of borrowers who attended for-profit colleges have defaulted on their federal loans, compared with 6.2 percent of those who attended public colleges and 4.1 percent who attended private colleges, according to provisional data that the Education Department released in February. Three years out, for-profit colleges' default rate has nearly doubled, to 21.2 percent of borrowers, and the gap between the sectors has widened."

The Higher Profile of Educational Debt

While it's long been a subject of anguished conversations in the grad student lounge, the topic of mounting educational debt and the toll it takes on young adults' earning power hasn't captured the public's attention. Until recently, that is. The New York Times published a story a couple of weeks ago about an NYU grad who has $100,000 in a combination of student loan and private loan debt, all for a BACHELOR's degree in religious and women's studies. Yikes. While this young woman and her family bear a large burden of WTF, the fact that NYU financial aid counselors, who were aware of the debt load, encouraged her to take out a loan through Citibank borders on the criminal. Today's Chronicle of Higher Ed reports that NYU has "discontinued the practice of callling prospective students and their parents to discuss the debt they could incur by attending." Why? Because they claim it didn't make a difference in people's decision making. This might be true, but considering the program lasted a single year, I would say the jury is still out.

Obviously, New York University isn't alone in having these problems. I am up to my eyeballs in debt (if I were this tall) and I attended a public university. As a graduate student, I didn't have financial support from my family, but was fortunate enough to not have any debt from my undergraduate degree. It didn't occur to me to seek financial counseling - taking out loans was just part of the program. I had a few tuition-remitting gigs in my department and then shifted into teaching anatomy. Because the anatomy program had its own graduate students, they did not offer tuition remission to "outsiders", even though anthropologists filled most of the teaching slots. To qualify to teach, I had to carry 6 credit hours. To be able to afford those 6 credit hours, I had to take out loans. I never sat down and did the math until it was too late. As an independent adult, I bear a ton of responsibility for that, but it is troubling that the system has so few off-ramps, and that so few advisors are aware of the student loan hamster wheel. Talking about finances is considered too personal, and debt is so shameful, that we avoid the conversation altogether, but for people entering such an uncertain job market, these enormous debt loads can be a real handicap and we need to start talking about it with our prospective students. In the short term, it may mean that programs only accept students to whom they can offer full financial packages, but in the long term it will require an overhaul of the financial aid system.

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund is teaming with graduate students at Columbia University's Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism to investigate abuses in the student debt industry. You can share your story, and read about other people's struggle with student loan debt.

Student loan forgiveness: dream or reality?

For many of us, a PhD was a dream that could only be attained through the use of student loans. Many, many, many loans. (For example, I taught anatomy in a different program that did not award tuition remission to anthropology graduate students, only its own. To qualify to teach I had to carry a certain number of hours. To be able to afford those hours, I had to take out loans. Multiply this by several years.) Given the amount of time graduate degrees in anthropology take, it's not unusual to be saddled for years with debt running into the six figures. I think I just had a small stroke. There are some potential solutions:

Qualified public service may earn you forgiveness on principal and interest if you have been employed FULL-TIME in that position for 10 years of repayment.
Of note to anthropological educators: " Full-time faculty at tribal colleges and universities, as well as faculty teaching in high-need subject areas and shortage areas (including nurse faculty, foreign language faculty, and part-time faculty at community colleges), also qualify."

The NIH Loan Repayment Program offers the potential for up to $35,000 per year to be forgiven if you engage in qualified research for two years. That's right: up to $70,000 of your total loan amount could be forgiven. I applied for this program during the last cycle (applications are accepted once a year). It is a rather intensive application process and you have to carry a high enough debt load to qualify - some percentage of your base annual salary. I believe you also have to be in a tenure-track or equivalent position.

The 5 areas of qualified research are appropriate for many biological anthropologists (in both human and non-human primate fields): clinical, pediatric, health disparities, infertility and contraception. Many of us do engage in research that has a clinical component, and you can also be creative as to how you frame your research. For example, my interest in the placenta and fetal development qualified me for the pediatric research program, although I ended up applying for the health disparities program instead. It's a competitive award but a wonderful opportunity to at least try to reduce your debt load. I will keep you posted - awards will be announced in June. But mark your own calendars for the December 1, 2010 deadline and start pulling your application materials together now.