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 Using outlier examples like these to make political (and
journalistic) points is common, but loans like the O'Malleys' are
not typical. In fact, stories about them may do more harm than good.
"It can potentially frighten off those lower-income people who can
most benefit from higher education," said Justin Draeger, president
of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
Without a post-secondary degree, it is much harder to move up the
economic ladder or even remain in the middle class.
O'Malley has proposed making public universities "debt-free" by
lowering tuition, increasing Pell Grants and making loan repayments
income-based. The former governor of Maryland has used his own
example to underscore his reasoning in campaign messages.
However, many families fail to see college as even a possibility
today because they overestimate its cost, said Terry Hartle, senior
vice president for government and public affairs of the American
Council on Education.
"The farther down the income scale you go, the greater they
overestimate," Hartle said.
Here is the reality: The average net cost for tuition, fees, room
and board, meaning what families actually paid after grants and
scholarships were deducted from the sticker price, was $12,830 at
four-year public colleges and $23,550 at private schools in 2014-15,
according to the College Board.
The average student loan balance for bachelor's degree recipients,
meanwhile, is $35,000, said financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz,
publisher of education resource site Edvisors.com and author of
"Filing the FAFSA."
For many, that is probably a manageable amount of debt, given that
2014 graduates earned an average $45,478 in their first year out of
school, according to the National Association of Colleges and
Employers.
Parent PLUS loans are a different matter. Unlike federal student
loans, which are limited to $5,500 the first year, parents can
borrow the complete cost of a college education without regard to
their ability to repay. Unlike students, parents cannot count on
higher incomes from the education they are financing to help pay the
debt.
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The O'Malleys borrowed more than "99.9 percent" of parent PLUS loan
recipients each year, Kantrowitz said. Fewer than one in five
bachelor's degree recipients who graduated this year had parents
with federal parent PLUS loans, and the average balance per parent
PLUS loan recipient in 2014 was $14,595.
Of course, some colleges charge a lot more than others. Tuition and
fees at Washington's Georgetown University, where the O'Malleys sent
their eldest daughter Grace, total $48,611 for the fall. Their
second daughter, Tara, attended College of Charleston in South
Carolina, a public institution that charges out-of-state tuition and
fees of $27,868. By contrast, the University of Maryland, in their
home state, charges less than $10,000.
O'Malley has said he and his wife took out parent PLUS loans so
their children could attend the schools they wanted without
accumulating their own debt. (The O'Malleys have two younger sons to
educate, as well.)
"We shouldn't be punished for working hard and following our
dreams," Grace O'Malley, a public schoolteacher, wrote to supporters
in a recent email highlighting her father's debt-free college plan.
The whole scenario makes it too easy to dismiss the O'Malley
daughters as spoiled and, by extension, to assume that parents and
students who struggle with education debt have only themselves to
blame.
But that would obscure the very real debate about how we pay for
college. Rising costs and debt burdens still affect many students
and their parents, and these serious problems should not be shrugged
off because of one family's ridiculous loans.
(Editing by Beth Pinsker and Lisa Von Ahn)
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