Jessica Moore and her husband, Matt, quickly obtained jobs in their areas of study upon graduation. The Moores critically review each dollar earned and spent with self-made spreadsheets. Visits to the vet for their pets are meticulously planned to keep their budget balanced.

“We don’t go out — we stay home and watch a movie, you know, because it’s free,” Jessica said. “We play a lot of board games too.”

Jessica graduated in August 2009 with a degree in child, adult and family service and political science while Matt graduated in May 2007 with a degree in public health and a minor in criminal justice.

The Moores chose to purchase a modest home on a mortgage on the north side of Des Moines before Jessica graduated from college. To them, it was a wiser choice to purchase a house rather than rent and not be able to retain any money invested in the property. The location was a good halfway between Ames and Matt’s job in Carlisle with the police force. They were married two months before Jessica finished at Iowa State.

Due to their busy and alternating work schedules, there are often days when they only see each other in passing.

“We’ve talked about getting extra jobs,” Jessica said, explaining that extra spending money does not exist in their budget. “We manage, but just barely.”

In college, Jessica obtained federal student loans and scholarships, and she worked part time in Ankeny at a Chili’s and participated in work study programs. But she still came out with $23,380 in loans, which will escalate to more than $33,000 by the time she pays interest. Matt walked away with $32,090 in private loans, although he worked throughout his collegiate career for the campus police.

For the Moores, life beyond college has not been the promised land that they had hoped for. The paychecks come in, the numbers are crunched over homemade spreadsheets and then the Moores watch $550 a month go toward student loans repayment — an outflow they will continue to watch for the next 10 to 15 years.

Matt enrolled in a program with his lenders to obtain lower monthly payments, however, he was told he could no longer take part in the program after he made a payment too early.

The Moores said they would’ve made changes during college, like taking out less in loans, paying more out of pocket and avoiding living on-campus.

“Hindsight is 20-20 I guess,” Matt said.

They intend to look into programs that offer student loan forgiveness if they continue to work in public service for a certain length of time.

Roberta Johnson, director of financial aid, points out student loans are different than other loans young people take out such as car loans. A vehicle, she said, depreciates in value, whereas an education does not decrease. In addition, a person is less likely to keep a vehicle very long in their life.

“We do require students to do the online entrance counseling for the Stafford loans and that’s mandatory – the federal government mandates students do that before we disperse the loans,” Johnson said. “You have to take into account the vast majority of our students are 18 to 22 years old and most have very little experience in credit up until [taking out a student loan].”

Jonny Choate, junior in political science, would like more education on what’s coming after graduation as far as getting out from under student loan debt. Choate financed his freshman year with a private loan from Iowa Student Loan, his sophomore year through Wells Fargo and his junior year through Iowa State’s Direct Loan program and federal loans.

“If my brother had $650 a month payments with half the debt, what are mine going to be?” Choate asked.

He estimates he will have more than $50,000 in debt by the time he graduates in 2011. His brother graduated with approximately $32,000.

“I’ve kind of put it on the back burner in my mind for now,” he said.

“One of the things we do request students do is complete an exit interview before they graduate,” Johnson said. “That walks them through the process of saying ‘here’s what my debt was and here’s what my repayment options are, here’s how I can get a deferment, here’s how I can get a forbearance.’”

A bill in the US House of Representatives, HR 2492, introduced by Representative Sander Levin, D-Mich., aims at amending federal Internal Revenue Service code to not treat student loan forgiveness under various programs such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Income Based Repayment as taxable gross income.

The Board of Regents recommended in their “Access and Affordability” report in 2008 to explore development of more loan forgiveness programs with state agencies and employers and tax incentives to do so.

In April, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, introduced a bill to the U.S. Senate to allocate $23 billion in federal money to states for faculty and staff as “compensation and benefits and other expenses necessary to retain existing employees” and to make new hires.

The Government of the Student Body created an executive branch position, Director of Student Debt Management, seating Alexandra Gaffney-Peden, junior in accounting, at the last senate meeting of the academic year. Gaffney-Peden, who said she personally holds $53,500 in student debt, wants to make resources more visible without requiring financial literacy courses. 

“I do not believe it’s beneficial to be a requirement,” Gaffney-Peden said concerning the one-credit course, HDFS 183X, currently available. She said students do not put effort into a course they are forced to take, but that the course needs to be publicized. 

She also will to promote four-year graduation plans as a way to curb debt. The National Center for Education Statistics states only 34 percent of full-time ISU students graduate in four years.

Gaffney-Peden said she would put focus on launching a peer-to-peer financial literacy program and work with ISU Ambassadors to push for earmarks from the Iowa legislature.

The new director of ISU Ambassadors, Jessica Bruning, sophomore in political science and apparel merchandising, design and production, said next year’s effort will focus on building a relationship with the state legislature before they go to session. ISU Ambassadors travel to the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines two or three times per year with their largest push on Regents Day.

State Sen. Herman Quirmbach, who serves as Vice Chair of the Iowa Senate Education Appropriation committee, said the program makes a strong impression.

“It’s very effective, talking to their hometown representatives to make sure the whole legislature understands [higher education funding] affects all 99 counties, with students coming to school and going home to make their communities better,” Quirmbach explained. “It shows it’s not just about Story and Johnson counties.”

Last year, Brunning said, it was a scramble to fight to prevent deep cuts to higher education after Gov. Chet Culver imposed a 10 percent cut across the board. Sen. Quirmbach explained the governor does not have a free hand other than to make cuts across the board — which includes education, since education funding is 60 percent of the state’s budget.

Sen. Quirmbach said he “really hated” the budgetary process the past two years.

Brunning described being “yelled at” by members of the legislature during their lobbying.

“It’s definitely been a tough sell. Some of them would say ‘who are we supposed to take [funds] from? The little kids? Special education?’” Brunning said. “It confounds me. There’s a big push for us to stay in Iowa, so logically they would in turn support us. I mean with my major there aren’t any jobs available here so I won’t be able to stay in the state. It seems like they have forgotten us.”

Sen. Quirmbach said an item he wishes to pursue is making it easier for students to avoid paying sales tax on college text books, which he said currently involves too much paperwork.

Tied to the health insurance overhaul legislation passed in March was a student loan reform measure which essentially shifted $60 billion from subsidizing private lenders to boosting federal loans and Pell grants. Currently the national average Pell grant is $2,494.

Johnson said because Iowa State already participates in the Direct Loan program, it will have little effect here. However, the chance a student may be eligible for a Pell grant will increase.

University professor of economics and Ames City Councilman Peter Orazem, described it as cutting out the middle man.

“I think at the end of the day it’s probably a good idea,” Orazem said. “The idea behind it is you can use the same amount of money and lend out more to students because you’re not paying someone to handle the processing.”

The U.S. Department of Education estimates Iowa students will receive an additional $291 million in Pell Grants by the year 2020 thanks to the new law.

Orazem said a large amount of banking can take place online today and does not necessarily require a loan to take place over a desk.

He also said that student loans can take longer to repay because they are often designed to be more flexible than consumer loans, such as auto loans, depending on the ability to locate a first job out of college and other factors.

“General Motors doesn’t care what kind of job you have, they want their money,” Orazem said. “The car doesn’t pay for itself. You pay for the car and it’s the investment in your education that allowed you to pay for the car.”

The judiciary committee of the House of Representatives held a hearing on discharging educational debt in bankruptcy — student loans are currently exempt from most bankruptcy filings. The argument against excusing student debt in bankruptcy is that a creditor can take a car, or other property, but cannot take away an education.

It was once possible to have student loans more than five years old wiped away, until Congress passed legislation in 1998 to prevent federal loans being discharged under undue hardship. In 2005, a law was passed to do the same for private loans.

“This is not an Iowa problem,” university professor Steffen Schmidt said.

The GI Bill after World War II was the first big wave of emphasis on higher education, Schmidt said, followed by the creation of student financial aid during the space race with the Soviet Union.  Another possibility to redirect funds to education could occur after an upturn in the economy.

“When the economy is booming along, and there are lots of jobs, and tax revenues are rolling like rivers of money, everybody’s in favor of increasing spending for things like education, health care, roads and other things,” Schmidt said. 

Schmidt believes the next big surge in investment for education will not come until a cataclysmic event occurs, whether it is cyber-terrorism, an energy crisis or medical pandemics.

“It may take a shock like that,” he said. “That’s where we’re going to turn to fix a problem, is the universities.”