Crushed by debt

A growing number of graduate students are being denied teaching assistantships, research assistantships and other tuition deferral programs -- forcing them to pay skyrocketing tuition costs without University aid.\nAnd this could be especially crippling now and in years to come because costs of graduate school are rising. \nStudents who graduated from IU in 2006 could expect to owe almost $48,000 after graduation, compared with the $13,000 debt approximation from 1991, according to the IU Office of Student Financial Assistance Web site. This increase of more than 250 percent far surpasses the national inflation rate of about 3 percent. \nRyan Cole, a first-year graduate student in the masters' journalism program, pays all of his tuition and living expenses without help from the University. He worked four years before returning to school and expects very little debt following his graduation -- acknowledging that he is among the lucky.\n"It's pretty common for people to have a struggle every week to just pay the bills," he said. "Between jobs and the workload -- which is so much more intense than undergraduate -- it is really tough to make it through with everything." \nAnd many within the graduate programs agree. Tuition is higher than ever and aid packages are limited, causing the graduate student debt load to increase like never before.\nDespite this, graduate school popularity has boomed in the past decade. In the United States, about 2 million students are enrolled in postgraduate educational programs, according to the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students. However, many of these students, like Cole, have spent years in the workforce, which often leads to huge financial diversity within the programs, said David Daleke, \nassociate dean of admissions of the IU Graduate School.\nHe said about all of these students will accrue some debt upon graduation. \nThe problem can be traced back to the early 1990s when economic conditions began sharply declining in Indiana and the state found itself hard-pressed for money. Higher education funding dried up, and during this time the higher education budget across Indiana was cut by almost 3 percent, according to IU's government relations Web site.\nAs Indiana slashed the budget, a steady increase in tuition ensued during the last decade, a possible factor for the debt-load increase. \nIn 1996, for example, tuition for the Kelley School of Business Master of Business Administration program averaged $7,800 per year for Indiana residents, while in 2006, students could expect to pay nearly twice that amount, according to the IU Factbook.\nTo help offset these rising costs, IU has implemented increasingly competitive programs in which graduate students can work for the University in return for the deferral of a portion of their tuition. For the most qualified candidates, a stipend is often included.\nStudents entering graduate school could expect much more reliance on loans than undergraduates, said Roy Durnal, associate director at the Office of Student Financial Assistance.\n"(Teaching assistantships,) in my opinion, can help subsidize or reduce the cost of graduate school, but I think it's a little misleading to say it will pay for all of graduate school," Durnal said. "A department may have 50 students in their graduate program, and they may only have 10 teaching assistantships."\nShana Bergen, a master's student of philosophy, received one of the University's most lucrative packages. In return for helping teach undergraduate philosophy, IU awarded her free tuition, as well as a salary each month.\nHowever, Bergen said she felt the monthly stipend was not nearly enough.\n"It's really hard to even survive on what we have," she said.\nBradley Lane, a Ph.D student in geography, receives $1,200 per month for his work. He said it is often challenging to get by on the stipend, and those who try to hold outside employment almost always fall behind in their studies. \nHowever, Daleke said the graduate school continues to make postgraduate education a viable option despite such rapid debt increase.\n"It's hard, and that is why we at the graduate school are doing our best to help support the graduate students," he said.