Student loan interest rates are set to go up next week and Carmen Berkley, an Black student leader with five college loans and some knowledge of the financial aid system, doesn’t know what to do.
“It’s very daunting, and I still don’t understand it. I don’t think a lot of students understand,” says the University of Pittsburgh senior who worked with a national lobby group in Washington, D.C., to protect student interests. But she is besieged by advertisings and mailings urging her to consolidate her various loans, which total more than $50,000. And, the ads say, she should do this before the July 1 rate increases on Stafford student loans and parent PLUS loans.
Berkley and thousands of other college students will have to come to grips with a shifting student loan market. Gone are the low interest rates of recent years, replaced by higher variable rates that will add up to larger repayments after they leave school. In some cases, rates would creep up by about 2 percentage points.
“We’ve had a solid decade of happy news on interest rates,” says Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “That’s coming to an end.”
For minority students, the rate increase may also increase their reticence about incurring large college loan debts.
While interest rates alone may not persuade minority students to put off their education, it is one of several trends that may affect access, says Thomas Mortensen, a higher education analyst with Postsecondary Education Opportunity.
“Higher interest rates, along with freezing the Pell Grant maximum and escalating tuition, works to the disadvantage of low-income minority students,” he says. As a result, more may attend lower-cost institutions or delay college.
