The average student loan debt for The University of Mississippi graduates was $25,613, compared to the state average of $27,571 and national average of $25,550 in the 2013-2014 school year, according to the recent Mississippi Comprehensive Annual Financial Report Average.
With a full-time undergraduate enrollment of 16,677 students, the proportion of University of Mississippi graduates with federal loan debt was 49 percent and 14 percent for private loan debt.
Lauren Diven-Brown has been director of financial aid at Ole Miss since 2001 and an employee of the office since 1995. In that time, she said she has seen the cost of education rise while the amount of grants awarded has remained largely the same.
At The University of Mississippi, 68 percent of full-time undergraduates received some kind of grant or financial scholarship with an average scholarship or grant award of $7,124. The total amount of aid received was $77,298,490.
“When you look at the Pell Grant, it doesn’t have the same purchasing it used to, and thus as a result, more people are having to take out loans,” Diven-Brown said.
Pell Grants — financial aid awarded to high-need students — were awarded to 30 percent of university undergraduates for a total amount of $20,581,940, and 7,427 University of Mississippi Undergraduates — 46 percent — received federal student loans for a total amount of $53,739,109.
The university’s office of financial aid reports that the in-state tuition and fees were $22,444 for the 2013-2014 year, a 7.6 percent increase of in-state tuition fees from 2012 to 2014.
The out-of-state tuition and fees were $16,266 for the 2014-2013 year and $17, 728 for the 2013-2014 year, with a nine percent increase in out-of-state tuition from 2012 to 2014.
Diven-Brown expressed how to go about taking out student loans.
“Students should calculate all the factors when taking out student loans: how much they can afford, whether they’re going to work, if they’re receiving scholarships, if their family is going to help and how much they will probably make in the future with their major,” she said.
Diven-Brown also advocated for greater financial literacy amongst students.
“Parents and students should start having conversations about money responsibility far before college,” she said. “A lot of incoming freshman don’t understand loans and interest rates, but it’s their futures they’re borrowing against.”
The first-to-second year retention rates for the percentage of students who began their studies in fall 2012 and returned in fall 2013 were 86 percent for full-time students and 32 percent for part-time students, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. These retention rates measured the percentage of first-time students who were seeking bachelor’s degrees who returned to the institution to continue their studies the following fall.
The overall graduation rate is also known as the “Student Right to Know” or IPEDS graduation rate. The “Student Right to Know” tracks the progress of students who began their studies as full-time, first-time degree- or certificate-seeking students to see if they completed a degree or other award such as a certificate within 150 percent of “normal time” for completing the program in which they are enrolled. At The University of Mississippi, 71 percent of entering students in the fall of 2013 were counted as “full-time, first-time.”
