By Jill Barshay for The Hechinger Report.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Nevada News Service reporting for The Hechinger Report-Public News Service Collaboration

Marjorie Sener was still in her 20s when she took out a loan for about $5,000 to get some college credits she hoped would eventually add up to a bachelor's degree.

That goal was thwarted when her partner became ill.

"The burden of our living expenses fell on me," said Sener, who lives in the Dallas suburbs. "I devoted all of my resources to keeping our heads above water."

But while Sener never got her degree, that student loan kept growing, fattened by compounding interest.

Now, at 74, she owes more than $55,000, or 10 times what she originally borrowed, and has put off any hope of retiring. Sener still works, as a legal secretary, juggling her student loan debt with other expenses, including medical costs from recent cancer treatments.

"My payments are as small as I can make them, since I cannot repay the full amount," she said. "My financial goals are to be able to pay my rent, afford my car and medical bills and hopefully be able to provide for my own funeral expenses."

She isn't joking. Sener expects to never get rid of her student loan obligation.

"The fact is, I'll never be able to pay the full debt," she said. "It's just something that binds my life."

And the lives of a rising number of other older Americans.

The number of people age 60 and older who still have student loan debt has sextupled since 2004, and the amount they owe is up 19-fold, the think tank New America reports; there are now 3.5 million of them, who collectively owe more than $125 billion in student loans.

This is not, by and large, debt that parents assumed to send their kids to college. For three-quarters of federal borrowers 65 and older, it's money they borrowed for their own educations and have been paying off for decades the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, found.

That's a situation about to get much worse. More people with even larger student loan debt are aging into retirement just as the Biden administration's plan to forgive up to $20,000 of this debt for recipients with incomes under $125,000 has been blocked by the Supreme Court and the Covid-19 pause in repayments ends.

"A lot of people think of student debt as being a young people's issue. But when you segment the population by age, the people with the fastest-growing debt are older," said Thomas Gokey, co-founder of the activist organization the Debt Collective.

Many older Americans with student loan debt face retirement with less money than their classmates who didn't have to borrow, according to researchers from the Federal Reserve. And as they try to pay off what they owe, they're at the mercy of a patchwork of private companies assembled by the Department of Education to service loans, which often fail to provide information about payment plans tied to income and other ways to manage the debt.

"They've been failed by multiple systems," said Sarah Sattelmeyer, New America's project director for education, opportunity and mobility. "Our higher education system hasn't served them well. And the student loan repayment system also doesn't serve them well."

It's not that older borrowers with debt don't want to pay it back. Many say they simply can't afford to, New America found in interviews with focus groups.

Older Americans with student loan debt take second jobs, delay retirement, are less likely to own their own homes and suffer low credit scores. More than 60 percent say they don't have enough savings to cover their expenses for three months in an emergency, New America found. Nine percent say their student loan debt has forced them to forgo medical care, according to a survey by AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons.

"This is life and death for people. This is the difference between being able to pay to eat, to make rent, to pay a mortgage," Gokey said.

Even before the pandemic, nearly twice as many older borrowers as younger borrowers said that they were behind on repaying their student loans.

That can lead to the most dire consequence for older borrowers: having their Social Security benefits garnished, which is triggered when a loan has been delinquent for 270 days. Everything above $750 that a retiree receives each month from Social Security, or 15 percent of the benefit - whichever is lower - can be withheld and applied to the debt.

Some 114,000 Americans have had their Social Security garnished because they couldn't make their student loan repayments, according to the most recent available figures.

That drives many older borrowers into poverty, the GAO reports.

"Absent the student debt, they might have had a decent income," said Gokey. "They didn't do anything wrong. But they shouldn't have had this debt."

Yet even as money from their Social Security benefits is diverted to repay their loans, some see their balances continue to increase, thanks to interest, the GAO found.

"People get caught in default as this kind of quicksand," Sattelmeyer said.

It isn't only older Americans with lower incomes who are weighted down by student loan debt. Carolina Rodriguez, director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program at the Community Service Society of New York, said her clients range from people living in homeless shelters to judges.

"We are at another level of crisis," she said.

Take Charles Earl. He spent eight years in the 1990s getting a doctoral degree in computer science at the University of Chicago, from which he graduated with $70,000 of student loan debt. Now, at 61, he owes $136,000, and his son is starting college.

"I guess we'll make it work somehow. I don't really know how," said Earl, who lives in Decatur, Georgia, and works as a software developer. "We want to make sure he doesn't have to go through this. I've learned that lesson."

Thanks in large part to his student loan debt, Earl has no immediate plans to retire, he said. "It's most likely that I'm going to be working for the next 10 years and praying that my health holds out."

Many more Americans appear to be headed for this same fate. The proportion who have student loan debt continues to increase, with more borrowers ages 35 to 61 holding debt than those who are 62 and older, the Boston College Center for Retirement Research estimates.

"This is becoming potentially a bigger problem," said Siyan Liu, a Center for Retirement Research economist.

Biden's loan-forgiveness plan would have erased the student loan debt of 20 million Americans and reduced it for another 20 million. Instead, interest on loan payments will resume Sept. 1 for all loan holders after the three-year pandemic pause, and the bills will begin to become due again in October for borrowers of all ages.

"People are already coming to us and saying, 'We can't pay it,' " Gokey said.

About one in five borrowers will, in fact, struggle to make their payments, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A

survey of consumers by Morgan Stanley put the number even higher, at one in three, while nearly four in 10 said they will need to cut their other expenses to afford their payments.

"I am afraid that among the highest potential for delinquency and default is going to be this group," Rodriguez said of older borrowers.

There are some ways to escape this, depending on the type of the original loan, the National Consumer Law Center advises.

Borrowers with Federal Family Education or Perkins loans can consolidate them into direct loans, then tie the payments to their income, for example; these so-called income-driven or income-contingent repayment plans allow the loans to be canceled after 20 or 25 years, depending on the circumstances.

Even that is little consolation to Mary Donahue, a social worker in private practice in Richmond, Virginia, who has converted her loans into income-contingent repayment and will have them forgiven in 2037. She'll be nearly 76 by then, however, and will have paid $159,033 on her loans; the principal was about $109,000.

"It feels very helpless," said Donahue, now 61. "I can't imagine retiring. I will have to work for the rest of my life. The only positive thing is that my debt will not be left to my children."

There are some ways out of this. People who believe they were misled by recruiters or went to colleges and universities that closed before they finished a degree can petition for their debt to be forgiven. Or loan holders can apply for "total and permanent disability" discharges, a process that has been slightly simplified over the last few years for veterans and others. A limited program called Fresh Start, which will be available for one year starting in September, will give borrowers who defaulted a chance to catch up on their payments and return their loans to good standing.

There are other consequences to this problem. At a time when college enrollment is already plummeting, said Sattelmeyer, "something we heard a lot in our focus groups is that when someone had a negative experience with their college loans, they were more likely to tell younger generations that higher education wasn't worth it."


Jill Barshay wrote this article for The Hechinger Report.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.


get more stories like this via email

Leaders of a teachers' union in Louisiana are voicing concerns about a package of bills they say would have the effect of dissolving labor unions in the state.

The list includes House Bill 571, which would prohibit public agencies from paying union workers for the time they do anything union-related, even if it's on paid leave.

If passed, said Roberto Furtado, a special-education teacher in the Jefferson Parish Public School System, the bills would end collective bargaining and prohibit payroll deductions for union dues. Furtado said all this would make it harder for new teachers to join the union, further silencing their voices.

"If they make it more difficult for the new teachers, young teachers, to get involved," he said, "then basically, it's a roadblock so they're probably more than likely going to just not do it."

House Bill 572 would prohibit public agencies from collective bargaining with unions, except for police and firefighters. Similar bills have been introduced in multiple states by conservative groups.

The teachers' union has posted petitions on its website for teachers to sign and send to their lawmakers.

Educators in Louisiana have said they're dealing with low pay, overcrowded classrooms and school safety issues. However, state lawmakers have advanced a budget proposal that would cut teacher pay, and the House Appropriations Committee forwarded a spending plan that reduces a $2,000 pay stipend teachers got this school year to $1,300 next year.

Furtado said the end result is forcing good teachers out of the profession.

"Teachers are an invaluable resource for our community, and so we need good, well-rounded educators that want to be there and continue their jobs to help these young men and women, because again, they are our future," he insisted. "That's kind of corny to say this, but yes, our children are our future. If you don't take care of them, where does our future lie?"

The legislative committee also allocated $25 million for a differential teacher compensation strategy for the second year in a row. The union opposed the strategy, because it said the raises wouldn't be permanent and could be taken away from year to year.


get more stories like this via email

By Lane Wendell Fischer for the Shasta Scout via The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

Hiring and maintaining a qualified educator workforce is often a primary concern for rural schools across the country, requiring local education leaders to create innovative solutions.

The University of Wyoming’s College of Education has recently partnered with local community colleges across the state to repair a pipeline for future Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers at high schools and community colleges. 

CTE programs offer students an array of skills-based learning opportunities for many high-demand industries ranging from construction, to nursing, to marketing.

For decades, Wyoming has relied on traditional methods to fill out its CTE teacher workforce. After completing a two-year associate’s degree at their community college, students could either enter the trades or take another two years of teacher training. 

“It was very much a fork in the road,” said Rob Hill, a CTE consultant for the University of Wyoming and president of SkillsUSA Wyoming. Hill became a Wyoming CTE teacher through this traditional path.

“You had to take life off and go to school,” Hill said. “That limited a lot of people, especially students with families, jobs, and homes.”

As it turned out, most students never completed the final two years of teacher training and just entered the trades after the first two years at their community college, Hill said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

This outdated pipeline has contributed to a shortage of both CTE teachers and skilled workers in the state.

According to a 2023 report from the Wyoming Professional Teaching Standards Board, the median age of CTE teachers in Wyoming schools is 52, and national numbers are similar. Compare this to the average age of all teachers in the U.S., which is just over 42. 

On average, a state employee in Wyoming retires at 62. This means that in the next 7 to 10 years, Wyoming could lose close to half of its CTE workforce to retirement.

“We’ve seen a number of things that have impacted us and that rural part is very real,” Hill said.

In rural communities, a CTE program might only consist of one or two teachers. When that school loses a teacher, the whole program is at risk until a qualified replacement is found. 

During a recent tour of Wyoming’s school districts, Jenna Shim, PhD and interim dean of the College of Education, learned that some high school CTE programs are closing down because they couldn’t find replacements.

“One CTE teacher shared with me that he has a specialty in welding, but he has to teach culinary arts,” Shim told the Daily Yonder. “I could see welding and construction, but welding and culinary arts seem like a far stretch.”

And it can be difficult to attract new talent to small schools and communities. 

“We tend to do best with people that are invested in that community previously and become teachers, as opposed to bringing in teachers into small communities,” Hill said.

The CTE Domino Effect in Rural Communities

Adding to the difficulty of attracting new teachers is a domino effect caused by current teacher shortages, Shim and Hill said.

A shortage of educators leads to a shortage of high school CTE programs, which leads to a shortage of students pursuing CTE in the state, followed by a shortage of tradespeople in the state, and a shortage of essential services, which, in turn, leads to less attractive communities.

On top of educational advancement for students, repairing CTE teacher pipelines through state and local partnerships helps assemble the next generation of rural water experts, plumbers, electricians, technicians, mechanics, and more, Hill said.

“It has a trickle-down effect into the stability of the community,” Shim said.

And in rural communities, small fluctuations in population, programs, and services can be especially catastrophic — or especially beneficial. 

“It doesn’t seem like a big deal if you don’t have one teacher,” Hill said. “But that one teacher in a town of 2000 people that teaches welding, where you have a huge welding industry, that has an extremely large impact.”

The broken pipeline has also raised economic concerns. “Without a sufficient number of teachers, it’s hard to prepare a sufficient workforce,” Shim said.

Two key industries in Wyoming are energy and tourism. Both rely heavily on skilled workers. And both are susceptible to booms and busts that give local communities economic whiplash.

“Over the last decade especially, there’s been a real desire to diversify our workforce,” Hill said. “And that means a different generation of career and technical education, like manufacturing, cybersecurity, and data analysis.”

Repairing the Pipeline

The biggest problem in the previous CTE teacher pipeline was continuity, Hill said. The pathway to teacher certification in rural communities must be both attractive and achievable.

This spring, the College of Education piloted a new course that aims to do both by exposing community college students to CTE teaching before they complete their associate’s degree and decide between trades work or teaching. 

“Creating a more seamless pathway is a real goal here,” Hill explained. 

The bridge course will be offered each semester in partnership with all eight community colleges in the state and is inherently low stakes. The course credits can be applied toward an associate’s degree at the community college, toward their teaching degree at the university, or toward any other bachelor’s degree they pursue.

In the course, students get a taste of what a career in CTE teaching is like. Coordinated by Hill, the course is one dose online learning and one dose on-site learning. Hill leads the online classroom, where students learn about different national and statewide topics. “But students will learn about how it’s implemented locally,” Hill said. 

Each community college has a community college professional and a school district professional that serve as a mentor and safety net for local students, introducing them to CTE leaders at both levels. 

One area of misconception is how much CTE teachers are paid, Shim said.

“I think wages scare them most,” Hill said. “But in Wyoming, our hourly wage is higher than many of the trades folks. We have pensions. We have healthcare. It’s a lot more competitive than folks think it is.”

The organization of the course is a masterclass in rural ingenuity. By using technology, the course eliminates long distance travel to the university campus in Laramie on the southern border of the state. It allows students to remain in their local communities, while still being connected to the state’s CTE teacher network.

“We knew we had a statewide problem and we needed to create a statewide solution, or in this case, a local solution for a statewide problem,” Hill said. “This is about connecting people in Wyoming. Because we have these vast distances between us, we have to have a way to connect people.”

Twenty-two students are currently enrolled in the pilot course. Half of the inaugural cohort are community college students. The other half includes veterans, community college instructors, K-12 instructors, and paraprofessionals who are exploring their future career options.

The course has garnered support from state legislators, the university, the colleges, local high schools, local business, and from the students themselves. 

Each of the enrolled students is taking the course tuition-free, thanks to scholarships from local businesses and private donors.

“Word is getting out,” Shim said. “I think that’s a testimony for how important this work is.”

Strong CTE programs lead to strong communities, Shim and Hill said. A lot of high school CTE programs are embedded into community culture. Organizations like FFA provide opportunities for social gathering and community service, for example. 

“We’ve come up with a mutually beneficial solution and this takes a partnership and teamwork,” Hill said. “No significant advances take place without a group of us working together in a mutually beneficial system.”


Lane Wendell Fischer wrote this article for the Shasta Scout via The Daily Yonder.


get more stories like this via email

Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick has released 57 "interim charges," the topics he wants Senate committees to study in preparation for the 89th legislative session next year.

Four charges are for the committee overseeing public education. They include improving reading and math readiness in grade school, and redesigning the state's standardized tests.

Eli Melandrez, government relations associate for the American Federation of Teachers-Texas, said educators are surprised the list does not include pay increases for teachers or controversial school vouchers, which use public money to pay for private schooling.

"It's interesting to see both of those key issues absent from the interim charges," Melandrez observed. "Across the state we've seen school closures; we've seen teachers being let go. We've seen a greater percentage of our teacher workforce as uncertified educators."

Two unsuccessful special sessions were held in the past few months, in an attempt to pass a school voucher proposal. Other charges for public schools include examining how school districts used COVID-19 funding, and monitoring the implementation of bills passed in the last session.

Patrick also directed the Higher Education Committee to analyze faculty senates, monitor bans on DEI policies at colleges and universities and revise policies for faculty tenure.

Melandrez noted their union is now affiliated with the American Association of University Professors and members are concerned the lieutenant governor is inserting his own political views into the education system.

"That's worrisome for us," Melandrez emphasized. "In public education and higher education, we are seeing a concerted effort to minimize educator voices."

Patrick also wants senators to review university antisemitism policies and protecting the First Amendment rights of faculty, staff and students. The next legislative session convenes Jan. 14, 2025.