Fall 2015
Feature Story
Steep
The high cost of living with student debt
The high cost of living with student debt.
Tomi Stahlberg just graduated from the University of Helsinki, a prestigious institution in Finland. He has a master’s degree in history, a field he chose because he loves it, not because a career in history would be the moneymaker he’d need to pay off his student loans.
That’s because Stahlberg didn’t need student loans for tuition: For him, and for everyone around him, higher education is free.
For Sam Perry, a college graduate in the United States, the situation is entirely different. His parents covered undergraduate tuition for a history degree at the University of Massachusetts, but he was on his own for law school. He enrolled in a night program so he could work during the day, and saved on rent by living with his mother. Still, he graduated with more than $100,000 in student debt, and took the first job that fit, rather than holding out for the government job he would have preferred; he simply couldn’t delay starting to pay off his loans.
Tomi Stahlberg just graduated from the University of Helsinki, a prestigious institution in Finland. He has a master’s degree in history, a field he chose because he loves it, not because a career in history would be the moneymaker he’d need to pay off his student loans.
That’s because Stahlberg didn’t need student loans for tuition: For him, and for everyone around him, higher education is free.
For Sam Perry, a college graduate in the United States, the situation is entirely different. His parents covered undergraduate tuition for a history degree at the University of Massachusetts, but he was on his own for law school. He enrolled in a night program so he could work during the day, and saved on rent by living with his mother. Still, he graduated with more than $100,000 in student debt, and took the first job that fit, rather than holding out for the government job he would have preferred; he simply couldn’t delay starting to pay off his loans.
