Archuleta, Kristy L., Anita Dale, and Scott M. Spann. "College Students And Financial Distress: Exploring Debt, Financial Satisfaction, And Financial Anxiety." Journal Of Financial Counseling & Planning 24.2 (2013): 50-62. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.
Do the negative side effects of borrowing student loans have a distinct impact on other aspects of a student's life while they are currently enrolled?
Right now, I feel that student loans only negatively affect the student who are less well off financially. A lot of my other sources have come close to saying this, but I want to take it a step further and say that student loans are currently a bad thing for students with lower academic scores who come from lower economic backgrounds, because the debt they can find themselves in is often something they will have the most trouble getting out of. So in theory, while enrolled these more at-risk students while have more pressure on themselves to perform well and be able to pay off their debt in the future. While reading, the article brings up an important point that after college, graduates find their student loans take longer to pay off than they had originally thought, another example of how many college students are not financially aware. After reading the article, it raised some interesting points that went against my argument, and I feel like those are good to consider. The reason I felt this article would be helpful was because it discussed financial distress, which is a way of measuring a student's level of mental health in relation to the amount that they owe in debt.
The article performed a test to measure the different financial stresses of students depending on whether or not they went to on-campus financial planning resources. The results were what you would expect, that students who used these resources were less likely to have as much financial stress because they had their futures more planned out. The article raised the point that a lot of financial stress comes from students who do not really understand how their finances work, and after graduating college did not realize the hole that they are in and have not planned for. Also raised the point that financial stress is more likely to negatively affect graduates as opposed to current students.
A lot of what this article has said has really changed my opinion on the matter. At the start of my research, I was really set on proving how student loans pressure current students and have a negative impact on their time while enrolled. However, this article mentions students who take the time out of their lives to go and talk to financial planners, and I for one have never heard of a single one of my friends or anyone I know of going to talk to a financial planner while enrolled in a university. I think a lot of that is due to how frightening it is to have to talk about the debt you have racked up. The point is, the research says that students who go to financial planners are less likely to have this stress, but not many students actually go to financial planning. I feel as though many students are not even aware that this is an option at many universities. Most importantly though, the concept of students having to face this pressure after graduating makes more sense to me ultimately than my previous theory, and I think I want to focus on other questions rather than figuring out the impact of student loans on current students.
The way this synthesizes with my other sources is that it rejects a lot of what they are saying. My other sources talk about the negative impact debt has on mental health and how that changes every facet of a student's life while on campus. However this source says that simply by seeing a financial planner, a student's stress is likely to go way down, and that most stress students face is actually after they graduate. I do not think that either source is necessarily correct, although I tend to agree more with the fact that financial debt has an impact on student's lives.
The new question this has led me to ask is no longer about the impact on student's college lives, but instead I want to explore whether or not student loans are a good medium of funding one's college career. I will need to find an article that mentions the positives and negative of student loans.
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