Student Perceptions of Student Debt

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the extent that high school students are concerned about student debt. Additionally, this study was conducted to see how much knowledge students had about college expenses and to see how they planned to pay back college debts. 

Hypothesis: Students will be concerned about having student debt. 

Method: 11th-12th grade students at two large, suburban high schools in the Northeast completed a 16 item survey assessing their plans for the future. The survey consisted of questions including if participants planned on going to college, how participants planned on repaying their college debts, how confident they felt in their abilities to pay back the borrowed money and how important the total cost of a college education is when deciding on what college to attend. 

Result: A total of 148 usable responses were collected and evaluated. 99.32% of participants planned on obtaining a college education, and 34.46% of students reported that cost was very important when making a final decision about where to attend college. A spearman's rank-order correlation analysis was conducted and found there to be several positive correlations including both parents socioeconomic status’ and the most important factor when deciding on a college. Conclusion: Although no correlation was found between students' grades and their concern with student debt, the study did show that students were only moderately confident in their abilities to repay their loans before graduation, helping to support the idea that high school students are concerned about student debt.