As college students everywhere prepare to head back to class, they and their parents are also facing bills for tuition and other college expenses.
It’s not uncommon to take out student loans to pay for school. But the interest rate you will pay for those loans is up this fall. Vicki Beam is a Financial Counselor with Michigan College Planning in Traverse City. “A lot of them are probably getting their bills right now and figuring out how to pay them.”
Carol Crawford is a parent of college senior, and has another student coming up fast in high school. “My oldest son is now 20. And he is at Michigan Tech,” she says. The thought of paying for college is hard to escape. “How are we going to pay for this? We knew student loans are out there. We hoped we didn’t have to do that, and he definitely didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to be saddled with that when he graduates.”
Crawford’s oldest son did dual enrollment through NMC, getting some college courses for free while still in high school. “He did dual enrollment in high school and that helped. So he had an associate’s degree from NMC before he ever left Traverse City. That helped tremendously, financially,” she says. “He also works full time. He’s very motivated. We’ve helped him where we needed to but luckily we didn’t need to get any student loans.”
And even if tuition itself isn’t going up this year – the cost of student loans is. That’s because of the interest rate hikes…
