Female Face Higher Student Loan Debt Than Men in Arkansas

Female Student Loan Debt Exceeds Male Debt in Arkansas

Throughout Arkansas, females graduate from college with more student debt than men. Lack of scholarships and the gender pay gap contribute to this problem.

By Kirsten Baird, Coleman Bonner and Abby Zimmardi
The Razorback Reporter

Female students graduate from college with an average $1,165 more student loan debt than male students within colleges and universities in Arkansas, according to an analysis of 2016-17 federal student loan data.

Priscilla DuFresne is paying for college on her own, so she is taking out the maximum amount of loans possible each year. Photo by Abby Zimmardi

College Scorecard, U.S. Department of Education database, showed the median debt for female college graduates was an average $10,029 in 2016-17 versus $8,864 for male graduates in Arkansas.

The gap between female and male student loan debt held true for the 2015-16 academic year, when female graduates faced an average $1,333 in more debt than male students, according to College Scorecard.

The reality of today’s competitive workforce is that a degree is required for almost every career, and many studies show that the pay gap between males and females still exists. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, women only made 49% of what men earned over a 15 year time span. Thus, upon graduation, it is hard for females to pay off their loans quickly.

“I just know of a lot of guys who have their entire school paid for by going here and I don’t know of many girls really,” said Madison Spyres, a fifth-year music education and exercise science major at the UofA. “It’s a little strange that females don’t have more scholarships.”
Spyres, 22, has been taking out loans since her sophomore year, she said. The first semester she took out $2,000 and every year after that she has taken out $7,500.

Priscilla DuFresne, a University of Arkansas junior who is majoring in graphic design, has felt the impact of student loans. DuFresne, who is paying for college on her own, said she needs to take out the maximum amount of loans possible each year in order to pay for school.

“Last year I had around $13,000 but I know I had to take out loans this year so it’s probably around $20,000,” DuFresne, 20, said. In addition to borrowing loans for tuition, DuFresne said she uses loans in order to pay for art supplies for classes.

Top 10 schools where female student debt exceeds male student debt

Luke Molina, a Dallas resident and senior business student at the UofA, faces large college expenses since he pays out-of-state tuition. However, Molina says he is confident in his ability to pay off the loans following his graduation because of the resources and networking he’s acquired in his time in school.

“It was a little hard to decide to take out loans,” Molina, 21, said. “But I had to do what I had to do, it was either that or go home.”

Top 10 schools with higher male student loan debt

Kristie Spielmaker, a UA alumni and current Director of Supply Chain Flow Performance at Walmart, had an academic trajectory that was different from the usual trend. She started attending the university after she was already married and had children.

Spielmaker said she received about $4,000 per year from the UofA, a total of $10,000 over the course of two years through the Brandon Burlsworth scholarship, and about an additional $2,000 per year through Walton College. This totaled about $34,000 from 2008-2012.

“I had a lot of student loans, as we used them for living expenses since we had a family and I was not earning an income while in school,” Spielmaker said. Even now, with a good job and good scholarships, Spielmaker still has about $20,000 worth of student loans to pay off.

November 1, 2019November 7, 2019

Withdrawal Debt Puts Pressure On Former Students Across the State

Students Who Don’t Finish College Still Face Student Loan Debt

A serious illness forced Meredith Petrus to withdraw from the UofA, leaving her with at least $6,000 in student loan debt. She’s now back in school, but faces a significant debt burden. Photo by Parker Tillson.

By Parker Tillson and Abbi Ross
The Razorback Reporter

Student debt after graduation is an issue for college students everywhere, but many of those who have dropped out or left school still face a debt burden.

That debt can affect former students in various ways, making it more difficult to purchase a new house or return to school.

Meredith Petrus from Springfield, Missouri was a sophomore at the UofA when she caught strep anginosus, a bacterial infection, and fell into a medically induced coma for two weeks. Unable to make up the time she missed, Petrus was forced to withdraw from the university.

Petrus estimated her hospital bills were about $1 million. On top of that burden, Petrus said she faced student loan debt of between $6,000 to $7,000 after withdrawing from school after just one year.

“I had to get on a payment plan for my school and my hospital bills,” Petrus said. “So I’m just chipping away at it slowly.”

“It’s already been a year and I haven’t even made a dent,” Petrus said.

Petrus has returned to the UofA as a 23-year-old junior, and is a manager at Wasabi, a sushi restaurant on Dickson Street.

If Petrus’ debt was averaged out into four years, it would be about $2,000 to $6,000 more than the average graduation debt for UofA students, which was $14,181 in 2017, according to College Scorecard, a U.S. Department of Education database.

Alex Ramirez, 24, of Rogers, Arkansas, attended the UofA and withdrew after five years because of a lack of interest in his degree. Ramirez left with only $3,000 of debt. Ramirez said he kept the debt low due to his work ethic.

“I always had two jobs,” Ramirez said. “If I wasn’t in school I was at work.”

Leah Willeford, a 37-year-old from DeValls Bluff, Arkansas, is one of many former students in Arkansas who now faces around $15,000 student debt after she withdrew from college.

Willeford started school at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro in 2000 with the goal of attending pharmacy school, but then withdrew, she said.

She withdrew from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2005, Willeford said.

“I accumulated debt that I am still paying,” Willeford said. “The first few years were hard financially, I had to take hardship forbearance which allowed the interest to go up.”

Hardship forbearances allow those with debt to temporarily stop making federal loan payments to avoid default, according to the Federal Student Aid website.

Willeford now faces monthly debt payments, and worries it will affect her ability to buy a house.

In 2016-2017 the average median debt for students who withdrew from Arkansas colleges was $12,250, a figure that rose $1,993 from the 2015-2016 school year.

Anna Ramirez started school at Arkansas State University Mountain Home in 2004, before transferring to the UofA, for a degree in photojournalism. She withdrew in the spring of 2011 because she did not have financial aid for another semester, she said.

Anna Ramirez said she has accumulated around $40,000 in student debt.“If I had known then what I know now, I would have not gone into debt for the education I got,” Anna Ramirez said, who is not related to Alex Ramirez. “Even if I had graduated that semester, the amount of debt I am in, I cannot make enough money in Arkansas to pay that debt.”

Arkansas State University Mountain Home’s total median debt for students who withdrew was $4,750 in the 2016-17 school year. This withdrawal debt level decreased by $3,250 from the year before, the biggest decrease in debt for the state.

October 28, 2019November 4, 2019

First-Gen Students Work, Borrow to Pay For College

By Mary Fracchia, Mary Hennigan and Elena Ramirez
The Razorback Reporter

Aaron Alamo, a junior at the University of Arkansas, is the first in his family to attend college.
His mother, a first-generation immigrant from Mexico, didn’t receive a good education.

“She really wanted us to have a good one, so she moved to the United States,” Alamo said. “She didn’t really have that opportunity.”

Aaron Alamo, a first-generation student, describes the importance of being a first-generation student. Video by Mary Hennigan.

Alamo, like many first-generation students, is accumulating student loan debt, now about $20,000. Alamo’s debt burden is above the median debt load of $14,072 for first-generation students at the UofA in the 2016-17 year, according to College Scorecard, a U.S. Department of Education database. That’s close to the median debt load for all UofA students that year.

While this is a significant burden, Alamo said it motivates him to stay in school. Although he wanted to come to college for a better future, he is worried about the prospect of making payments.

About one-quarter of all University of Arkansas students are the first in their families to attend college, according to UA Office of Institutional Research data. The university’s $14,072 in median first-generation student loan debt is higher than the statewide debt for first-generation students, $9,421 in 2016-17, according to College Scorecard.

Interviews with a variety of first-generation students show they are paying for college through a combination of part-time jobs, scholarships, and in some cases, with family support. Alamo, for example, pays for the remaining college costs with earnings from his part-time job as a dispatcher at J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc.

As a first-generation student, Kathryn Archila, a UofA senior, said she had difficulty understanding which scholarships to pursue and how to navigate the loan process. She collected $6,000 of federal student loan debt at University of Central Arkansas in Conway, she said. She will have more debt attending the UofA because she is taking more classes.

Archila said she has two part-time jobs, one at Target and the other as a teacher’s assistant. She plans to become a music teacher in Rogers after graduation. She decided to stay in Rogers, her hometown, where she makes a weekly commute to Fayetteville.

A graph displaying the top 10 colleges in Arkansas with the highest first-generation debt for 2016-17 by Mary Fracchia.

Brandon Davis, who graduated in May, plans to begin paying off his $40,000 student loan debt in November, he said.

“I look at student loans as an investment in your future,” Davis said.

Davis graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism in four years, and currently works part-time for KNWA-TV, he said.

“I would not trade my four years at the UofA for anything,” Davis said. “[The debt] is there, but you can’t take away those four years of memories and all the people I met along the way.”

A graph comparing first-generation debt and UofA enrollment by Mary Hennigan.

Not all first generation students have student loan debt. Kevin Azanza said he is excited to be the first in his family to afford to go to school “My school is paid for by scholarships, my parents and by me. I have [looked into private loans] but that is definitely one of the last things I want to go to when it comes to paying for school,” Azanza said. He has no loan debt.

He works part-time as a customer service associate at Walmart Inc. He has classes three times a week and commutes from Rogers. Azanza transferred to the UofA after paying two years of out-of-state tuition at Northwest Arkansas Community College, or NWACC. Azanza is majoring in both communications and political science.

Another first-generation student is Victoria Toan, a UofA senior, who paid for this semester a few weeks ago, she said.

Victoria Toan discusses how she started saving for college at age 16. Video by Mary Hennigan.

Toan started saving for college after getting her first job at 16 years old. “If college is something you want to do, you start saving as early as you can,” Toan said. In addition to working for her college, Toan received a FAFSA scholarship and a Cherokee Nation scholarship, she said. Toan’s parents would not pay for her college, she said.

“I’m grateful for that,” Toan said. “It gave me a sense of responsibility. Graduating without student debt feels great.”

October 24, 2019October 27, 2019

Low & High Income Students Choose UofA Over Community College

Some community college students transfer to the UofA despite prospects of heavier student debt.

By Hanna Ellington, Sophie Neubaum, and Kate Duby

Many students across Northwest Arkansas transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions despite higher tuition costs and student debt. The UofA ranks fourth highest in low-income student debt rates across the state, according to College Scorecard data from the 2016-17 academic year.

For many students, getting an undergraduate degree from a four-year institution comes at the cost of taking out student loans. For low-income students, debt from the UofA is almost $15,000, according to College Scorecard. On the opposite end, NWACC results in just over $6,000 in debt for low-income students.

Savannah Fields, 20, spending time on the UA campus. Photo by Hanna Ellington.

The UofA is working to reduce the financial strain by having transfer students work with advisors before transferring schools, said Denise Burford, the associate director of financial aid.

“Our academic advisors are really good at helping them understand what classes they could continue to take there to save costs before transferring here,” Burford said. “We’ve got a solid transfer advising program between the two schools, so a student can take as many classes as they can there and not have to take some here.”

Although the UofA takes preventative action to reduce the cost of transferring, it is likely that students who transfer will use other resources to lower costs, Burford said.

“I would say most of the students that transfer from NWACC to here are going to be applying for federal financial aid,” Burford said.

The undergraduate debt disparity among low-income and high-income UA students ranks 27th in the state, according to College Scorecard. Average in-state tuition for the UofA is approximately $7,500, according to UofA financial aid website. In comparison, in-district tuition for NWACC is approximately $1,800, according to NWACC’s financial aid website.

In May, the UofA announced they would be offering a scholarship for students who graduate with an associate’s degree from a two-year institutions in the UA system. The scholarship will reduce the UA tuition rate to the same rate the student paid at the two-year institution, Chancellor Joe Steinmetz said at the commencement of UA Rich Mountain.

Melissa Moznabi, 19, a sophomore from Rogers, will accumulate approximately $10,000 in student debt by the time she graduates from the UofA. Her tuition cost will amount to roughly $2,000 per semester.

The difference in the top 10 schools with the most debt for low-income students in Arkansas.

Moznabi, who is majoring in theater, chose to attend the UofA because the school offered her intended degree plan. Moznabi considered attending community college, “but ultimately it didn’t have what I wanted in higher education,” she said.

Savannah Fields, 20, a UofA sophomore from Fayetteville, began her college career at Northwest Arkansas Community College because of the reduced cost. She said she expects to accumulate over $20,000 in student debt, even with in-state tuition and scholarships.

“I went to NWACC because it’s obviously a lot cheaper, and I also wanted to focus on my classes and not get overwhelmed with the college experience,” Fields said.

While Fields said she understands that transferring is costly, she thinks the extra expense is worth it. She said she thinks the extracurricular opportunities, peer collaboration and freedom go hand-in-hand with her education and will benefit her career.

The various amounts of debt for low-income students in Arkansas by school.

NWACC freshman Felicity Hunt, 18, of Farmington chose to further her education at community college after graduating from Farmington High School.

Hunt thinks NWACC and other community colleges, are good options for students who want to give themselves more time to understand what careers they wish to pursue, she said.

“Honestly, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, so I didn’t want to commit to going to a four-year without fully understanding what I wanted to pursue a degree in,” Hunt said.