“But I can tell you [at] the moment I am struggling on the bare necessity [of] food and water,” confessed Jesse Coe, a recent graduate of Virginia Tech who received his degree in International Studies over the weekend.“It sucks even after college I am still struggling and I have a higher education diploma.”

Coming from a family with a single mother who he says “doesn’t have any money to spare,” Jesse realized early-on that if he wanted to go to college he’d have to find the money to pay for it himself.

And that’s just what he did. The summer after his freshman year Jesse found himself going door-to-door, knocking at the homes of strangers, as he traveled across the country selling children’s educational books for his sophomore year rent money. Flash-forward to the last semester of his senior year where Jesse took the maximum 18 credit hours at the same time he says he was working at his campus job “continuously” just so he could pay for his “bills and food.” Typically students take between 12 and 15 credit hours each semester, and seniors usually make it a point to take less – but for Jesse this wasn’t an option as he had fallen behind in credits when, last fall, he was forced to take a semester off to work because as the economy was plummeting the cost of living was rising, and he simply couldn’t pay his bills without working full-time. Indeed, Jesse’s college experience has always been a struggle. And unfortunately, he isn’t alone. In Virginia, and across the country, young people are increasingly struggling with finding the money to finance their college education.  

With at least 12 of Virginia’s 15 four-year public universities confirming tuition and fee increases next year for as much as 11.8 percent, Jesse’s story will likely become increasingly more common.

Virginia Tech is one of four state schools that have raised tuition and fees by more than nine-percent. For Virginia Tech the 2008-09 school year marks their greatest increase in tuition and fees in the past five years. Next year’s incoming freshman should expect to pay at least $55,000 for their diplomas – and that doesn’t even include textbooks which a 2005 study published by the United States Government Accountability Office found to cost students an average of nearly $900 each year.

Astronomical as these costs may seem, thecostof not graduating from college may be far worse. A 2005 study by the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that workers with college degrees make nearly double the annual earnings of workers who only have a high school diploma. Workers with advanced degrees, like masters and Ph.Ds , on average make $74,602 – nearly three times the annual income of workers who have not graduated from college. This income disparity places a near mandate on students to pursue a college education no matter the cost.

To lessen the immediate cost of college, like Jesse, many students choose to take out loans to help cover the costs of tuition and room and board. These loans allow students to borrow money for school in return for their promise to repay the loan when they graduate. With an estimated two-thirds of students obtaining some type of financial aid, like student loans, the student loan business has grown to a nearly $85 billion-a-year industry thanks to high interest rates compounded over long periods of time. Jesse says he’s facing about $14,000 in student debt and hasn’t yet determined how long it will take him to pay back the loans. And because he hasn’t found a job yet he’s had to defer the loan, put-off repayment, until he thinks he’ll be able to make the monthly minimum. Assuming he wants to be debt-free by the time he’s 35 he would have to pay about $160 every month for 10 years for a total of $19,333.62 for a $14,000 loan, which means he’s paying about 26 percent more than he borrowed. Of course if he’s willing to pay $276 every month for five years he would only be paying about 16 percent interest. 

By comparison Jesse is lucky in that his debt is about $5,000 less than the average debt for the roughly two-thirds of students that borrow money to pay for college. Students repaying the average debt of $19,202 over ten years will have to pay about $221 monthly at a total interest of about 28 percent.

With most of Virginia’s public universities raising the cost of attending by about four to 12 percent the educational challenges facing Virginia’s youth become even greater. Young people are the future generation, and yet, the future looks dismal for those students who cannot afford the rapidly-increasing price tag for a baccalaureate degree. But without the degree they will likely never make more than today’s equivalent of $30,000.  

And yet, dismal as these options may be, we can draw strength and hope from the lessons of the many people like Jesse who have been through the struggle and are fighting it successfully. Jesse says he’s been going to university career fairs over the past six months but that “[not] too many employers were interested,” he thinks the employers are mostly interested in students with degrees in engineering, accounting, math, and economics. Indebted and jobless, Jesse has decided to apply for the Peace Corp and is hoping that traveling with the Peace Corp will give him the opportunity to “gain more experience with [his] second language to aid in [his] success in finding a good employer.”