Half of MU students graduate with no debt, but average for those with debt is $20,000

With the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in late June against President Joe Biden's plan to cancel student loan debt, one ray of hope for University of Missouri students disappeared.

Nearly half of all MU students graduate with no federal student loan debt, said MU spokesman Uriah Orland in an email. Of those with debt, the average amount is $20,000.

Nationwide, 45 million Americans owe $1.75 trillion on student loans.

Scholarships are one way MU keeps student debt at bay, Orland wrote.

"We offer thousands of scholarships between endowments, donor gifts, and institutional funding," Orland wrote. "Our automatic and competitive scholarships that are outlined on our admissions page are the most recognizable scholarships our students receive. Every year we analyze all of our scholarship and grant programs to help meet the needs of our students and make Mizzou affordable based upon that student’s circumstances. Scholarships and grants can have many different criteria such as merit, financial need or other distinguishing criteria."

There's an online portal students can use to apply for scholarships, he wrote.

"ScholarshipUniverse is a platform we use to process our departmental, endowed, and gift scholarship and grant opportunities for students for them to easily apply and be matched with potential scholarship opportunities on campus," he wrote.

The portal was helpful in finding scholarships, said Danya Kassem, of Columbia, a former wrestler at Hickman High School.

It's not eliminating student loans, she said, speaking in Memorial Union.

"Last year I had about $6,000" in student loans, Kassem said. "I'm planning on going to med school, so I'm planning on that increasing dramatically. It will probably be another $6,000 this year."

Kassem's main concern is not paying off the loans, she said.

"I'm concerned about how long it will pay off," she said.

Her mother, in her 40s, just paid off her student loan she got in her 20s, she said.

Loan forgiveness wouldn't have solved the problem of student debt, she said.

She came to that conclusion listening to National Public Radio with her grandmother, she said.

"The root of the problem is not loan forgiveness, it's the cost of education," Kassem said. "The root issue is the cost of education."

MU for the coming year adopted a new tuition model, based on the student's area of study and eliminating many of the added fees.

The scholarship portal matched her with scholarships for which she qualifies.

"I would say they're helpful," Kassem said of university staff.

She received a diversity scholarship, but it won't be available to future students because of another U.S. Supreme Court decision, requiring universities to end the practice of considering race when admitting students.

All MU students who have been awarded the scholarships get to keep them, officials have said.

Ellery Johnson, of Hayworth, Ill., doesn't have any concern about paying off her $13,000 in student debt as she prepares to enter her senior year.

She will have an engineering degree when she graduates.

"The starting salaries are fairly high and the job I have lined up pays well," Johnson said, also speaking in Memorial Union.

It was her plan to get an engineering degree, she said,.

"It was kind of strategic," she said.

Adam Cox-Irwin, of Columbia, graduated in 2021.

"I think I have about $22,000 in loans," Cox-Irwin said.

He works in the registrar's office at MU and said repayment should be doable.

"I can pay it off in the standard 10-year time period," Cox-Irwin said. "I feel better about it than when I graduated."

The job in the registrar's office pays well, he said. He talked before eating his lunch the the MU Student Center.

His degree is in history.

"I liked it," Cox-Irwin said of the major. "It helped me in my current job."

The president's debt cancellation plan would have been ideal for him, he said.

"It personally would have been nice," Cox-Irwin said.

President Biden said he has a new path to forgive student loans through the Higher Education Act of 1965. It authorizes the education secretary to modify or waive federal student loans. Biden called it "legally sound" but noted it would take longer.

MU has many avenues to help students with student debt, Orland wrote.

"The university has dedicated significant resources to help students and families plan for and manage their debt successfully," Orland wrote. "We work with students and their families from the time they apply until they graduate to ensure they understand the costs to attend the institution and any financial aid that they are eligible for while they attend."

MU's Office for Financial Success offers students and their families one-on-one financial counseling in areas including budgeting, financial goal setting, saving and student loan exit counseling, he wrote.

Roger McKinney is the Tribune's education reporter. You can reach him at rmckinney@columbiatribune.com or 573-815-1719. He's on Twitter at @rmckinney9.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Supreme Court ended President Biden's plan to cancel student debt