Women face higher rates of student loan debt, studies find

By Coleman Bonner
The Razorback Reporter

According to the American Association of University Women, females graduating with a bachelor’s degree have an average cumulative debt of $21,619 as opposed to the $18,880 cumulative average for males. Females, on average, leave school with greater amounts of student loan debt than male graduates due to what experts say are institutionalized and cultural factors creating the debt disparities.

“Women now make up the majority of college students, though they continue to suffer from a lack of mentoring, subtle and explicit sexism, and implicit bias in many professions,” said Lisa Corrigan, associate professor of Communications and director of the Gender Studies Program at the UofA.

Corrigan said that while she took out loans to finance her education, she was well informed of the risks and what her borrowing cap should be, something she says is rare.

*Lisa Corrigan, Associate Professor of Communications and Director of Gender Studies Program at the UofA, image courtesy of UA website*

“The majority of owners don’t understand compounding interest or loan repayment,” Corrigan said.

A 2017 LendEDU study of 1,400 students found 50% of female students said their parents didn’t help pay for college in any way, while 43% of their male students had no financial support from their parents. The survey found 6% of females have the entirety of their school paid for by parents, but 10% of the males were similarly lucky.

Alice Shattuck II, Fiscal Support Manager for UA Associate Vice Chancellor’s Office

“I think some people are going into it with an imperative to go to school and take it all out in loans without really thinking long-term,” said Alice Shattuck II, fiscal support manger for the Associate Vice Chancellors Office. “I definitely think people are unaware of what they’re signing up for and I definitely think people are not making a good cost and benefit decision before they take out these loans.”

Denise Burford, associate director of financial aid for the UofA, said that , depending on the major and individual seeking the loan, the risks of student loans can often outweigh the potential benefits of a degree.

“Drive is more important than anything,” said Burford. “We’ve bought into the idea that were going to earn more just because we have a college degree and while it’s true for most, it’s not true for everybody.”

Corrigan agreed. “It depends on the degree and the amount of student loans,” Corrigan said. “It also depends on the student’s family and their generational wealth. There is no one-size-fits-all answer because not all students can bear the same debt load.”

While college degrees certainly are helpful and often essential in certain career paths, there are some that are objectively more valuable than others. These majors, like engineering for example, have higher starting salaries than others and are often male-dominated. These factors contribute to the differences in debt between genders. For example, elementary education, which has a median yearly income of $35,800, has a workforce that is 88% female. Electrical engineering has a median yearly income of $78,500 but 91% of graduates in this field are male, according to a study posted by PayScale.

Denise Burford, Associate Director of Financial Aid . Photo by Coleman Bonner.

Though these high-paying career fields are more likely to be male dominated, women within these fields are still making less than their male counterparts. According to the same PayScale study, the starting salary of a woman in an electrical engineering job will be $1,500 less on average than her male counterpart. Furthermore, men in elementary education make $3,100 more in starting salary on average than females.

“They are hired into the same jobs as men and make, on average, less money for the same labor,” said Corrigan. “Women in Arkansas are less likely than men to be in the labor force and more likely to live in poverty and only about 20% of women in Arkansas hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.”

November 13, 2019November 13, 2019

PatWalker

Pat Walker renovations bring new and improved resources to campus

By Coleman Bonner
The Razorback Reporter

Completed renovations at the Pat Walker Health Center have officials excited about the easier access to services related to sexual assault, mental health and other important services.

The renovation included a 20,000-square-foot addition that offers a new home to several services as well as improved space for services already offered. The expanding health center added three classrooms, student study areas, a new home for the Women’s Center and larger space for Wellness & Health Promotion and Administrative Services.

A major development of the finished renovations is a resource center for sexual assault victims and services. The Garland center, across the street from Pat Walker, was rented for extra space for the wellness center during the renovations and has since been transformed into the full-time home for the sexual assault services, with the wellness services being relocated back to the Pat Walker center.

While 18-24-year-old college-age women are three times as likely to experience sexual assault as all other women, according to a study by the National Crime Victimization Survey, only 20% of female student victims report the incidents to authorities. RESPECT, or Rape Education by Peers Encouraging Conscious Thought, and STAR, or Support, Training, Advocacy and Resources, provide the university with services aimed at helping victims of assault as well as providing information on statistics and advocacy throughout campus.

“They are there for victims of sexual assault but also for preventing it. Anybody who is impacted by it we hope to have the support that they need,” said Mary Alice Serafini, associate vice chancellor of Student Affairs and executive director of Pat Walker.

“We also hope to help talk about things that impact the occurrence of sexual assault and one of those things is alcohol.”

To prevent assaults, an NCAA CHOICES grant was used to create an RSO, Razorbacks Offering Accountability Resources. ROAR pairs multiple organizations throughout campus, including services offered through Pat Walker, and aims at offering options for students wishing to avoid drug and alcohol peer pressure. The goal of ROAR is to “create student-led initiatives, including, public service announcements, bystander intervention, alcohol awareness week and sober spring break,” among healthful activities that reduce alcohol misuse and abuse behaviors among a variety of student populations. The program is a campus-wide effort to help UA students make better decisions regarding alcohol usage.

Another development is the expanded counselor-in-residence services. Two counselors live and have offices in Reid and Gibson halls, which offer direct access to counseling services for students living on campus.

“A counselor-in-residence is a doctoral student in the counselor education program with advanced training in counseling, helping skills and crisis situations. Some of the issues a counselor-in-residence can help with are adjusting to college, anger, stress, grief, relationships, roommate problems, and time management, to name a few,” according to the UA website.

Within the last five years the Health Center has expanded its hours to offer evening availability, part of Pat Walker’s constant mission to improve accessibility to students, Serafini said.

“We constantly look at patient flow and patient access and we want it to be as easy as possible for people to access any of our services and if were getting into overload for one aspect then we look how we can balance that out,” Serafini said.

The counseling center was also transformed with group therapy rooms, a multi-purpose classroom, new office space and a larger waiting area.

“That’s why I love my job, nothing remains the same and things change all the time,” said Serafini,

Another motivation behind the center’s renovation was to have services available to help students with whatever they may need, medical or not.

“We’ve always felt that we were educators in addition to technicians and so if you see a provider here, real often you’ll get some education not only about perhaps a medical condition but how to navigate taking care of your good health,” Serafini said.

With studies done on the health centers impact on student retention and graduation rate, Serafini said one of the main goals of Pat Walker moving forward is to have an impact on student’s lives post-graduation.

“We want to have an impact that goes well beyond earning your degree,” Serafini said. “We really want to help people build themselves to be strong and known how to access resources as they need them so that’s part of the lifetime thing I’m always focused on.”

October 14, 2019October 24, 2019

Construction begins on upcoming Student Success Center

Construction begins on Student Success Center

Students can look forward to easier access to mentoring and tutoring resources as well as potential future employment with the upcoming Student Success Center set for a Spring 2022 opening.

A groundbreaking ceremony on campus officially marked the beginning of the demolition of the Social Services building, in order to make way for the new Student Success Center.

With colleges like the J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences lacking a student success center, many people on campus had been advocating this project’s creation in order to provide a fair distribution of the University’s resources to all students.

“I’m excited as an academic advisor that will have a true space to accommodate our students,” said Fulbright College adviser Suzanne Wyatt.

This new space will be a 71,000-square-foot, $45 million, collegiate-Gothic limestone structure, located between Old Main and Memorial Hall, where the former Social Work building was. That building will be destroyed in a two-part demolition plan, beginning with the removal of paneling and other fixtures no longer up to code. The second phase will consist of removing the remaining structure.

The new building will offer a Fulbright advising studio, a life design studio, a STEM studio, as well as tutoring and classroom space. Other programs offered are the 360 Advising Program and the Accelerated Student Achievement Program (ASAP), both of which aim at assisting first-generation Arkansas students with counseling and resources to help them graduate on schedule.

“We’re particularly interested in first-generation students and ensuring they graduate with a degree,” Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz said. “The center will enable us to work on a better and bigger scale.”

Associated Student Government President, Jared Pinkerton said that the new center will create over 300 new job opportunities, many of which will be available for students. The center will also offer more resources for Supplemental Instruction.

“From the perspective of Student Government, we are always looking for ways to help students be successful,” Pinkerton said. “Students in this building will be investing in themselves.”

The director of student success and associate vice provost, Trevor Francis agreed. Francis said, “you’re not going to have an excellent program in student success without students helping students.”

“We’re trying to make sure we reach and exceed graduation and retention goals,” said Francis, who led the ceremony. “Our overarching goal is to make more students graduate.”

The Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management, Mike Johnson, described the center as a “centralization of the overarching structure of what a student success center does, trying to create a consistency among students; trying to put scholastic, economic, wellness and all of those things into one building.”

With these new resources having a centralized location as well as new outdoor dining and courtyard areas, this new center “is a key part of the University of Arkansas’ strategy to advance student success,” according to a statement from the University. As Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz said, “above all this facility will allow us to embrace more students.”

“We emphasize one student at a time,” Steinmetz said, “students are the unique individuals that have the hopes, dreams, and aspirations.”