{"id":3977,"date":"2017-10-09T06:41:34","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T10:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scholarshipacademy.org\/new\/?p=3977"},"modified":"2017-10-14T02:55:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-14T06:55:43","slug":"op-ed-about-student-loan-debt-in-georgia-for-the-ajc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarshipacademy.org\/online\/op-ed-about-student-loan-debt-in-georgia-for-the-ajc\/","title":{"rendered":"Op-Ed about student loan debt in Georgia for the AJC"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Get Schooled<\/h1>\n

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Your source to discuss and learn about education in Georgia and the nation and share opinions and news with Maureen Downey.<\/h4>\n

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Fault for broken college dreams & soaring debt falls on families, schools and\u00a0state<\/h1>\n

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Jessica D. Johnson is founder of\u00a0the Scholarship Academy,<\/a>\u00a0a nonprofit organization that helps low-income\/first-generation families create college funding plans and increase their eligibility for private scholarship funds.\u00a0She serves on the\u00a0GEAR UP Georgia\u00a0(Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program) leadership team and the Atlanta Youth Commission.<\/p>\n

In this column, Johnson discusses a three-part series,\u00a0Debt Without Degree,\u00a0produced by the\u00a0Hechinger Report\u00a0in collaboration with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The recent series examined college costs, student debt and HOPE Scholarships\u00a0in Georgia.<\/p>\n

You can read the first story on the untapped HOPE Scholarship surplus\u00a0here.\u00a0You can read the\u00a0second story here\u00a0about the impact of college costs and debt on students and the state. You can read the\u00a0third story\u00a0here\u00a0about college affordability in Georgia.<\/p>\n

By Jessica D. Johnson<\/p>\n

For Georgia\u2019s college students, this week is the traditional add\/drop period, or, as I like to refer to it, \u201cRaise enough money to keep your classes from being purged\u201d week.<\/p>\n

Over the last few weeks, the Hechinger\u00a0\u201cDebt Without Degree\u201d\u00a0series in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has profiled students who have fallen through the financial aid cracks, and who are making life-altering decisions about whether or not to stay in college or drop out because they simply can\u2019t come up with the money to meet expenses.<\/p>\n

While the stories may have shocked some, the realities of the student stories ring all too familiar for the Georgia\u00a0college counselors and families struggling to keep their students enrolled.<\/p>\n

As a national scholarship expert and executive director of the Scholarship Academy, a nonprofit that helps students secure private scholarships, I dread answering my phone at the beginning of each semester because I know I\u2019ll hear pleas from scores of Georgia students desperately looking for urgent help to\u00a0meet financial aid gaps.\u00a0At some universities, balances as low as $250 will get students purged from the system before the first day of class.\u00a0At private institutions, students with an unpaid $1,500 balance could be sent home by mid-terms.<\/p>\n

With the rising tuition and fees at state institutions, the shifts in HOPE eligibility and funding levels, and the absence of a much-debated statewide need-based aid program, it is time to admit Georgia is in the crux of a financial aid crisis.\u00a0If the intangible losses of more than 5,000 students dropping out of Georgia\u2019s four-year institutions in a three-year span in large part due to funding won\u2019t get our attention, perhaps the financial losses will. According to the American Institute for Research, college dropouts cost our nation $4.5 billion in lost income and taxes.<\/p>\n

It would be easy to point the blame at legislators who have neglected to\u00a0allocate HOPE reserves<\/a>\u00a0or activate a statewide need-based scholarship program. As an advocate of financial aid accountability, I would argue none of the proposed solutions\u00a0alone\u00a0can solve our state\u2019s college funding shortages. The reality is that everyone is at fault.<\/p>\n

Families should do more research on four-year financial feasibility before making a college choice. Far too many families wait until it\u2019s too late, and let the financial aid process\u00a0happen to them, instead of proactively making financial aid work\u00a0for them.<\/p>\n

College advisors must stop the cookie-cutter approach to college admissions: laser-focusing on college admission numbers and relying on the\u00a0Free Application for Federal Student Aid\u00a0\u00a0or FAFSA\u00a0as the primary financial aid support. Low-income and first-generation students need individualized supports to map out a realistic college funding plan before they enroll.<\/p>\n

Universities have a responsibility to be transparent about unpaid balances that would cause them to drop students from their enrollment.\u00a0 An easy step in the right direction would be addressing the policies regarding outside scholarships so that they don\u2019t inadvertently penalize students by reducing university aid.<\/p>\n

To be fair, there are a host of colleges such as Georgia State that offer\u00a0Panther Retention Grants\u00a0to support students\u2019 financial matriculation, and many schools, such as\u00a0Atlanta Technical College, have established hardship funds that award students up to a thousand dollars toward their expenses to alleviate financial burdens.<\/p>\n

The truth is, there\u2019s no one solution to college financing in Georgia, but as a new wave of families begin to click \u201csubmit\u201d next month on those complicated financial aid forms for the 2018-2019 school year, more than the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) is at stake. We\u2019ve all got to do our part to make some sense of this college dollars dilemma.<\/p>\n

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Get Schooled [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Your source to discuss and learn about education in Georgia and the nation and share opinions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":7,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-newsevents"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/scholarshipacademy.org\/online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/studentdebt.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6jfBU-129","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2667,"url":"https:\/\/scholarshipacademy.org\/online\/not-another-scholarship-workshop\/","url_meta":{"origin":3977,"position":0},"title":"Not Another Scholarship Workshop","author":"JJohnson","date":"February 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"New York Times. 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Find out more at Georgia Colleges Day, a free online event dedicated to exploring all that Georgia colleges have to offer. 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