CONCORD, N.H. — While both college debt and the “boomerang” phenomenon are growing, a new study casts doubt on the notion that staggering student loans are driving young adults back to their parents’ doorsteps.
In the past decade, student debt has doubled, with the average 2015 college graduate owing $30,000. The rate at which young adults “boomerang” also is increasing – recent studies report that between 20 and 50 percent are returning home. Many assume the former causes the latter, but Jason Houle and Cody Warner — assistant sociology professors at Dartmouth College and Montana State University, respectively — found the opposite.
Their study, published last week in Sociology of Education and based on annual surveys of more than 5,000 people born between 1980 and 1984, found that so-called boomerangers had less student loan debt than young adults who didn’t return home.
“We’re trying to have an important corrective to the narrative that’s out there,” Houle said.
While many in policy and academic circles subscribe to what Houle called the Chicken Little idea that “The sky is falling, student debt is destroying the dreams of a generation,” others believe there is not so much a college debt crisis as there is a college completion crisis. The study backs up the latter idea, he said. The authors found a strong association between college completion and the boomerang effect: Young adults who did not finish their degrees had at least a 40 percent higher risk of returning home than those who graduated, likely due to limited options to finding a job.
Corey Dowe, who graduated from Cornell University in 2015, has been living with her parents in Barrington, New Hampshire, for just under a year. She said she did not leave college with significant debt, but said it makes more sense for her to live with her parents as she completes an online master’s degree program.
“They don’t mind me being here, and I don’t mind being here,” said Dowe, 23. “I’m just trying to be smart with money right now, so it’s somewhat money-oriented, but it’s not because of debt.”
