IRVINE, CA—As the graduation celebrations come to a close this week, the visiting family members depart for home, and the graduates themselves pack their things for the start of the next chapter in their lives, many have been startled to realize that they actually need to pay back the tens of thousands of dollars that they borrowed to pay for tuition, housing, books, and other education-related expenses.
"Wait. What?" was the reaction of thousands of recipients of bachelor's degrees across the nation after receiving notice that their repayments would begin in 6 months.
"I don't understand," they added. "This is really coming out of left field," stated the degree pursuers of their need to return what they had borrowed.
Although each borrower is required to undergo online orientations about student loans, and many also are required to receive individual financial counseling before agreeing to the terms of their loan, with each graduating class there never ceases to be thousands upon thousands of confused and dumbfounded baccalaureate recipients.
"Well, yeah I remember getting the money," explains graduate Ben Graham, 23, who majored in sociology. "I guess I just figured that everything would sort of just work itself out by now."
Another graduate, Ashley Fairbanks, 24, who majored in psychology and minored in criminal justice, asserts that she was aware of the borrowed nature of the funds, but "was really just sort of banking on Bernie Sanders or another one of those guys to just sort of make all of that go away by now."
"So wait," queried early education major Shantaya Wilson, 23, "you mean that when I signed my name on that stuff, I was agreeing to slowly return those funds to their original source, over time and with a low rate of interest? That doesn't seem fair."
University advisers throughout the country have run out of ideas, as Charlene Maddox, 38, explains. "Every semester it's the same thing. I sit the students down and tell them that this is a lot of money they are borrowing, and that they will need to pay it back after they graduate. They assure me that they understand, but then once graduation comes along, I get these phone calls from the same ones. They cry and plead, and act like they got scammed or something."
Interest rates and loan balances are reported both online and through mail to the borrowers every year, as required by law, but it seems that the information simply does not enter their conscious awareness for more than a few minutes.
"We've tried everything," says Lester Tracy, 51, of the U.S. Department of Education. "We make them watch videos with great graphics and charts that show them how these work. We give them online calculators so that they can run different scenarios. We give them updates on how much debt they have, but there's just no way to get through to them."
Interestingly, this phenomenon does not seem to affect accounting and business majors to the same degree it does others.