Students’s stress surpass making the grade, now tuition burdens

College applications and report cards are now just a fraction of the average high school student’s worries, as the burden of rising college tuition looms over their futures.

The director of Idaho State University’s Financial Aid Office James Martin said it costs an average of $19,000 for parents to send one student to college for one year, including both the cost of tuition and the cost of living.

(Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy report here:http://bit.ly/127cCL1)

“I think some families are shocked by the fact school has become so much more expensive,” Martin said. “Now, a student could work all summer and not really contribute the same percentages as they used to.”

But, Martin said there’s a silver lining through all of this.

He said, although attending college statewide has become so much more expensive, the upside is that ISU has much more financial aid available.

He said during the previous recession, the student population was at a high, so both grants and loans expanded with the rise in enrollment as well. However, lately enrollment has been slowly decreasing, leaving a chunk of aid money available.

Martin said the financial aid department paid-out $38 million in federal aid and another $11 million in state and institutional aid scholarships this past fall alone.

ISU student body president Kyle Son agrees enrollment has been decreasing and attributes a large factor to rising tuition.

“Enrollment has been decreasing, and at the same time tuition has been going up, and at the same time, the amount of financial support we get from the state has gone down,” Son said.

Rising tuition has been a fight both Son and the previous student body presidents have been fighting for against the state for years, but the slight increases have continued, nevertheless.

“It has been tough on students, and so that is my main concern. But the things we can do — we have scholarships and we have financial aid we can give out, but it’s not enough. And even a lot of the financial aid we have comes right out of tuition,” Son added.

Martin said students should remember to only borrow what they need because once students graduate, they are stuck with huge payments they can’t afford so they end up defaulting on those loans.

He said there are a few repayment plans graduates can choose from such as: a plan to pay-off that loan in ten years, a graduated income-based payment plan, and a graduate repayment plan.

He said the office will start awarding its next round of scholarship money come the first two weeks of November, so students should start applying soon.

To find out more information on the financial aid office, you can visit its website here:http://www.isu.edu/finaid/index.shtml

To view the most recent Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy report on this issue surrounding colleges in Idaho, you can see it here:http://bit.ly/127cCL1

Here is the link to the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy:http://idahocfp.org/