CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, the period for which both Syracuse University and the average private school charges tuition was misstated. SU charges $38,970 per year and the average private school charges $29,056 per year. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

When Imani Howard began applying to colleges as a high school student in Orlando, Fla., she barely took in the price tags attached to her four choices.

She knew the numbers — and the student loan debt they represented — would send her into a panic.

“I was terrified,” said Howard, now a junior international relations and anthropology major at Syracuse University. “Both of my parents are still paying loans.”

But a combination of grants and scholarships made SU, the most expensive school she applied to, turn out to be the cheapest. Her two on-campus jobs also ease the cost.

“If I didn’t have aid and scholarships, I would not be going to school,” she said, adding, “When you’re walking around a campus this big, you feel like there aren’t people going through the same thing.”

With the cost of higher education rising more than 250 percent in the past three decades, according to White House statistics, Howard isn’t alone. Like the rest of the country, loans taken out by SU students average into the thousands annually. The subsequent debt can make college graduates struggle to start their adult lives, even with assistance from their schools to manage tuition costs.

President Barack Obama highlighted these concerns during his recent trip through Central New York, unveiling proposals such as a plan to link federal aid to universities’ performances.

Across the United States, 41.8 percent of undergraduate students rely on some form of student loans, according to the most recent 2011-2012 school year statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics.

According to SU’s Office of Financial Aid and Scholarship Programs, this number is 60 percent at SU.

For each student, these loans average $7,885 a year at SU and $7,100 each year nationally, according to the same organizations.

In New York, college graduates shouldered an average $27,310 debt as they began their professional careers in 2012, said Nicole St. James, project coordinator of the SU/SUNY ESF chapter of the New York Public Interest Research Group. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York supplied the statistic.

Alarmingly high rates of student debt in recent years have thrown the issue into a national light, she said, noting the cost of outstanding student loan debt in the United States has surpassed credit card debt.

Graduating with massive loan debt can take a toll on students’ future plans, added Michelle Polizzi, a senior writing and rhetoric major who has led financial aid workshops on campus as a higher education intern through NYPIRG.

“It can really create a hold on what you want to do with your life,” she said. “It’s unfortunate but your financial situation does kind of define you, especially when you’re starting out on your own.”

“College is supposed to be about fulfilling your dreams and getting the job you want,” Polizzi, who is also a staff writer for the Daily Orange, continued. College itself becomes an obstacle, she said, by putting students in so much debt.

SUís Office of Financial Aid and Scholarship Programs is working to prevent situations like Polizzi described, said Carlos Adrian, associate director of financial aid compliance.

The most prominent form of financial aid at SU is grants that do not need to be paid back, he said, with 71 percent of SU’s undergraduate students using some sort of grant to pay their tuition for the 2011-2012 school year.

The average amount in grant money per student was $23,966 a year, he said.

Institutions similar to SU — four-year, private, non-profit schools that grant doctorate degrees — had a national average of 74.7 percent students with grants in 2011-2012, with an average $16,100 per student, according to The National Center for Education Statistics.

The discrepancy in grant aid between the SU average and the national average can be attributed to a variety of factors, Adrian said. For example, not all states offer grant aid like New York does, he said, likely boosting SU’s average.

Additionally, SU’s lofty price tag leaves room — and necessity — for more aid.

Financial aid of any sort at SU chips away at a tuition that is higher than the average four-year, private institution. SU charges $38,970 per year, according to its website, in comparison to the $29,056 per year that CollegeBoard estimates to be an average private school tuition.

While stressing every family and situation is different, Adrian said the financial aid office would never discourage a student from taking out a loan.

Rather, he said, the office works to inform students about their options.

One such option — the Pay As You Earn plan, which caps student loan repayments at 10 percent of a students’ discretionary income —was among the initiatives Obama mentioned at Henninger High School on Aug. 22.

A second proposal from Obama, which would link the amount of federal financial aid available to a university’s students to the university’s rated performance, would be welcomed by SU, said Adrian.

“We’ve been doing many of the things that the president has asked,” he said, noting SU already strives for a high graduation rate, and that students typically do well after graduation. “We’re not going to have to re-invent the wheel.”

On the White House’s College Scorecard, a website designed to make transparent college costs in terms of tuition, graduation rates and students’ ability to repay loans, SU has an 80.2 percent graduation rate and a 3.9 federal student loan default rate.

The latter compares to a national average of 13.4 percent, according to the site.

Christopher Faricy, an assistant professor of political science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said Obama is the first president to propose linking a rating system to federal grant money.

If enacted, Faricy said, the move would be ìhumongous.î

“As colleges have gotten more expensive, more students are taking out federal loans,” he said. “The federal government can be a bigger player in higher ed through the money they control through Perkins and Pell grants and things like that.”

The first part of the proposal, creating a ranking system by compiling information already publicly available, could be done without any congressional support, he said, making its manifestation highly likely in the coming years.

Actually linking the rating to federal aid would require the approval of a Congress currently politically divided, Faricy said. But even as Republican leaders deal with radical party members who oppose any Democratic proposals, he said, an effort to make colleges more affordable may not be too bold.

Said Faricy: “It would be hard to argue against.”

Published on September 4, 2013 at 1:48 am