Debt has a very intrusive nature. You think about it once, you’ll think about it forever.
Yesterday, I got off the phone with my sister feeling anxious and afraid. I sensed a simmering rage within her — a rage not unfamiliar, but recognizable. It’s one that comes after reckoning with just how much you owe your university. It’s a rage that comes after failing a class, because failing a class is more than a F; it’s a loss on return. That class you failed costs you $4,000. Classes are not simply expansions of knowledge, but financial risks.
For my sister, it will soon be the time where she must decide whether she can continue on with the burden of a new set of loans for a semester on the horizon. For millions of borrowers across the United States, college is like this perpetually.
UNC is a university that belongs to all North Carolinians. As such, it’s a school where the culture can make it seem like everyone enrolled is either heavily or fully covered by financial aid, on scholarship or well-off enough to pay tuition. Rarely heard are the experiences of those who fall between the margins, not included in UNC's pockets of extended grace.
While its enthusiastic support of scholarship is one of its most admirable traits, UNC falls short in hearing and addressing the heavy number of students not able to obtain full institutional support, left to sign for a favor they’ll spend the better part of their lives paying back.
They are no longer students, offered the opportunity of full engagement in the college model but borrowers, transformed by a debt that will consequently alter the trajectory of their college experience in ways that counteract the fundamental principles of the college model itself.
This shift isn’t unique to Chapel Hill. Across the United States, debt significantly shapes a borrower’s college experience differently than that of a fully-funded student. College becomes less about developing oneself and more about making payments and finding money. For the borrower, jobs are taken to meet loan obligations, not merely for living expenses. Office hours, internships and late-night study sessions are all part of a pressured push toward an end goal that centers on financial survival, not personal growth.
The stories of those who take on student loans are not told and not heard because simply living with debt is enough to silence one. It’s a disengaging experience where one is allowed in the race but can perform only with a weight attached to their foot. In this way, the student loan system generates a mass number of adults apathetic from their loss of faith in college.
That apathy usually begins as stress from overwhelming anxiety and helplessness. Fears of not having enough to pay take hold of a borrower’s mind and body, discouraging them from within. This stress leaves a borrower vulnerable in all areas. Their immune response is lowered, and they are more susceptible to depression and cardiovascular illness. Most concerning is the introduction of a formation of identity, limiting their worth to what they owe.
