Most research shows that college is a worthwhile investment. A college degree, often called a “ticket to the middle class,” is proven to boost incomes and promote financial success. But that’s only if you can get one. For thousands of students, the cost of college poses an immediate burden that outweighs any future fiscal benefits.

People nationwide are focusing on this problem, with everyone from presidential candidates to premier research institutions offering plans to address the student debt crisis and make postsecondary education affordable. But comparatively little attention has been paid to the students themselves — to their successes and shortfalls, ideas and experiences. To that end, we sat down with three students to ask what they thought about college affordability.

Following are the thoughts of one of our interviewees, Laney Taylor.

I think before I stepped onto Centre’s campus, my expectations were tempered by conversations I had with my mom and dad at the kitchen table when we were trying to figure out financial aid. And it was really frankly, in economic terms, about the investment we were making financially and also emotionally. I think what gets lost in these conversations [about affordability] is it’s not just about the money and the sticker price. It’s about the social capital and what is gained and what could possibly be a return. I know that was something where I differed from my peers whose parents were doctors and lawyers. They had social capital I didn’t have. That was a motivating force for me.

I moved to Georgetown, Kentucky for Toyota. My dad put tires on the cars and now he owns a small carpet cleaning business. But I guess a specific memory that shows their values is, my mom was taking care of me when I was little before pre-K age, and my dad was working the night shift at Toyota, and they did not have the money to put me in Montessori school, but they did anyway. [They did it] just because they knew education is a catalyst for change. Being first generation not growing up in eastern Kentucky is huge — that’s where we were from, and we were definitely the outlier in moving away. Just to be the first generation to be growing up in that space and time [and leaving], they thought that education was the determining variable for making use of that scary decision. So, I think the value was about social mobility, but it’s also about defeating the odds of where we came from.

I think what gets lost in these conversations [about affordability] is it’s not just about the money and the sticker price. It’s about the social capital and what is gained and what could possibly be a return.

I view my financial aid story as putting all these puzzle pieces together and until the very end you don’t know if it’s going to work out or not. There’s no safety net. It’s a point of pride for my parents to help support me through college. They’ve been saving for a very long time. We own a small carpet cleaning business now, so when I was younger, it was fledgling and just starting out. There are financial challenges with that, but it’s grown to really sustain me, my mom, and my sister and my dad as a family unit. They have the capacity to save for our higher education. But that still isn’t enough because emergencies happen, life happens. Life has expenses that you can’t predict. You can’t predict the amount you need to attend four years of Centre college. I remember running net price calculators like every hour of the night when I was trying to research schools because the last thing I wanted to do was put my parents in a position where they weren’t able to say yes to a college. And asking that question would be very, to me, intrusive. And I think it would be very painful to have that conversation.

I applied for a lot of merit aid and ended up getting a lot at WKU. But then again, thinking about return on investment and things like that, talking to teachers who had been through college, my definition of the value of college had really changed. It wasn’t about a credential any more, it was about a transformation of heart and mind. I saw that at Centre. I got to the interview round of a full-ride scholarship there. I didn’t get it and I really wasn’t able to navigate. It was a scholarship weekend and just navigating that was really, really hard. When you see that for the person before me, an interviewer had to step out of the room because their parents served on a board together… I was next and I was already shaking; I was like, “Oh, this is the norm in this space, and I am very much not the norm.” It went terribly. I did terribly. It was just knowing that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be in that space, and maybe no one else could tell but me, but me knowing that was enough.

It was just knowing that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be in that space, and maybe no one else could tell but me, but me knowing that was enough.

So I didn’t get that. Centre was still really on my mind. It’s a great school. And then I got my financial aid statement. I went to GSA [Governor’s School for the Arts], so that helped a little. I maxed out the normal aid they would give to a student like me. Still wasn’t enough. I was going to go to WKU and then I told my counselor at Centre this. He said, “Do you have time for a call on Monday?” President Roush called me from Centre and he was like, “What’s preventing you from coming here?” And they were able to help those ends come a little closer together. But that’s one story, and that’s not the norm, and when we’re thinking about policy, it’s not these stories [like mine] that should be shaping the conversations. That call doesn’t happen to every student. What can we institutionally do to improve situations?

I think Centre is a bit of a different ecosystem when it comes to how work factors into the college experience. So really the only type of work that students do is work-study. Federally-regulated, ten hours a week, max. And I could maybe count on one hand how many people hold jobs just for spending money, not using it to pay for tuition and those things. I’m not eligible for work-study at Centre, but a question I’m thinking about is, “Is there a way to implement work that complements a student’s educational experience in a way that maybe other jobs wouldn’t?” I’m thinking about whether it’s supporting the educational mission. Because I know that at certain schools, service-learning opportunities, internships, and practicums can be eligible for work-study.

I do still have student loans. My parents are paying but that’s made me think about taking a gap year before graduate school, to pay off those loans. But that’s just a personal choice I’ve made, and I’m lucky I have a choice at all.

My amount is [about $25,000], and that’s with family contribution and merit aid, performing arts aid, doing everything possible to make a school work without trying to pay something unrealistic, like $60,000 a year. I don’t think any rational person would do that. But for me, I think it’s really shaped how I view the next step of life. Carving out time for an intermediate stage where I pay back those loans immediately before interest starts to accrue, before going to graduate school, that’s shaped my life plans after Centre. My dad’s super into Dave Ramsey’s financial piece, so I’m already getting those books and those podcasts, and I have a loving family that’s really knowledgeable in that way and that’s willing to help me in that regard. I think that support is where my family’s come in — maybe not knowing how to navigate college but knowing how to navigate a loan. It’s really cool to see how their expertise, how their lived experience can help me in that way.

But I’m scared. I know it’s doable but trying to find that balance between finding work that’s substantive and helps me in the next stage of life in terms of graduate school and also pays the bills and pays the student loans, that’s probably something that a lot of us are going to have to navigate as life from an undergraduate institution ends. Especially senior year, that’s on my mind in terms of finding the balance between those two competing and worthy goals.

I’ve been thinking about this on a federal level because this summer I got to learn a lot. I have three very specific recommendations for Kentucky policymakers. This is coming from the vantage point of the federal level. I got to intern with the Higher Education Subcommittee in the House [of Representatives] this summer. There’s an organization, the Society of Washington, that gives funding for three college students to make that possible, so I was incredibly blessed to have that opportunity to think about the Higher Education Act and what legislative recommendations work for students like us in Kentucky. Three things that really jumped out at me:

1. Decoding the Cost of College is a report out by New America about what financial aid award letters look like and how variable they are between institutions. They read 15,000 of them, and some of them are very blatantly fraudulent. They’ll categorize loans as grants. I really encourage you to read the high-level findings at the least because reading those as a student because when I got back, I got out all of my financial aid award letters and work-study was called different things, nothing was synonymous between institutions. And that’s a really big problem in trying to compare the cost of college if we can’t even get the terms right or the terms standardized. So that was really concerning to me. I don’t know what that could look like on the state level in terms of policy but institutions having at least a glossary online where we can understand what a Perkins Loan is, what a subsidized loan is, because that knowledge is not there to decode these letters.

2. Also, FAFSA simplification. I recognize that’s something that’s getting done on a federal level, but if you qualify for SNAP, if you qualify for free and reduced lunch, there should be some translation of data, some cross-linking of data so you don’t have to fill out a 120-question FAFSA application when you’ve already reported this information to the government. I think lobbying for something like that would make the process a whole lot easier, especially if you’re applying as a dependent.

3. And the last thing I think we could all benefit from is improved exit counseling with financial aid counselors at a college. This is specifically what your loan is; this is what the interest rate is. I have loans from the Department of Education. Which do I pay off first? Maybe someone doesn’t have that knowledge or doesn’t know that there wasn’t a frozen interest rate over their four years. Just having someone to have those conversations with I think is incredibly important.

Laney Taylor is a senior at Centre College and a graduate of Scott County High School.

This discussion was conducted and transcribed by Rachel Belin and edited for clarity by Sadie Bograd, who wrote the introduction. This piece is the second part of an ongoing series about college affordability drawn from a panel discussion conducted in Frankfort, Kentucky on August 21, 2019 by the Prichard Committee College Affordability Working Group.

The Student Voice Forum is a publication of the Kentucky Student Voice Team. The opinions expressed on the Forum represent the individual students to whom they are attributed. They do not reflect the official position or opinion of the Kentucky Student Voice Team. Read about our policies.

The Student Voice Forum and the Student Voice Team were part of the Prichard Commitee for Academic Excellence when this piece was published.

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