SPRINGFIELD — A large crowd gathered Friday morning for a town hall event at Springfield Technical Community College that focused on what has become a defining generational experience for many young people: the ballooning problem of student debt.
The event featured Springfield Technical Community College President John Cook, Holyoke Community College President Christina Royal and state Sen. Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow. The Western Mass News-moderated panelists pondered the effects of, and possible solutions to, the fact that there exists a staggering $1.41 trillion in student debt in the United States as of 2016, according to numbers from the Federal Reserve.
“This is one of the defining issues of our generation,” Lesser said.
Royal started the event by talking about what she said was the need for educating students about what they’re getting into when they take out student loans.
“I was a first-generation college student myself,” she said. “I don’t think it really hit me until I got that first bill six months after graduating.”
For many students in a similar situation, Royal said, a degree of financial literacy and understanding of the future consequences of taking out a student loan is key for young people who may not realize what they’re getting into. Holyoke Community College, for that reason, has councilors that guide students through the process and provide them advice.
“This is an investment in their future,” she said. “They have to look at that decision like any other financial decision.”
Cook said that because of the need to take out student loans, community colleges offer a cost-effective option for many families. At Springfield Technical Community College, Cook added, many students’ tuition is fully covered by federal Pell grants. However, for a large portion of Pell recipients, there is still hundreds of dollars left to cover beyond that federal money.
In an age when people have become inured to hearing horror stories about students finishing college with five or six figures of debt, Cook said it’s important to remember that for some, even $500 in debt can be a crushing burden. That debt may mean the difference between buying a few tanks of gas or baby formula, he said.
“These are the types of choices that our students, their families, are having to make,” he said.
And with many student debt servicers using predatory collection tactics, some of the solutions proposed Friday inevitably went beyond just education. Royal, for example, advocated for increasing Pell grant eligibility.
Lesser has been a vocal in the state Senate around the issue of student debt. Earlier this year, he and State Rep. Natalie Higgins, D-Leominster, introduced what they call the Student Loan Bill of Rights.
The law would create an ombudsman position at the state level to advocate for students’ interests, would increase regulations against abusive practices by student loan servicers and would empower the state’s Commissioner of Banks to crack down on servicers who break those laws.
“Even if you’re a professional accountant, this is a difficult process to navigate,” Lesser said of the Byzantine system of student debt. “No one in that process is actually looking out for you.”
That’s exactly the problem that Lesser’s legislation, modeled after a similar effort that passed in Connecticut, would hope to solve.
Lesser added that there have also been a number of efforts in the state legislature to make community colleges tuition-free, and he said the money it would take is surprisingly small.
“We know how to do it, it’s a political challenge,” he said, referring to the difficulty of getting all state lawmakers on board with that goal.
The idea, he said, would be to cover costs above what federal and other public aid does not.
The idea isn’t a pipe dream, either. New York state, for example, has recently passed a law that ensures tuition-free college for residents attending the state’s public colleges using a similar model.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.