Graduate Loans Or Not
There are several ways to afford the rising costs of attending upper level education, and graduate loans are one of them. While there are many situations where graduate loans are unavoidable, there are several other options open to pay for schooling. Two of these methods are becoming a T.A. (Teachers Aide) or receiving large amounts of scholarship/grant money. While being a T.A. has drawbacks of its own in the immediate cost of time, and the pressure of performing to scholarship or grant standards can be very stressful, receiving a Master’s Degree with little to no debt is a goal worth pursuing.
There are several benefit and drawbacks to being a Teacher’s Aide but taking out graduate loans is not one of them. The first of these is the immediate decrease in cost. Rather than pay for your schooling, being a T.A. waives your tuition and several other costs. Another benefit is the experience of teaching. Although it may not be for everyone, teaching is a wonderful way to not only learn the material better yourself, but also learn how to interact with other people in a teacher-student situation, which may be useful at any point in time. Some of the drawbacks include the obvious cost in personal time. Graduate courses can be intense enough without taking out additional time to teach. Another drawback is the class selection. Most T.A.’s teach lower level courses, which can be monotonous at times. By being a T.A., you can avoid graduate loans all together.
To be fair, graduate loans have the benefit of being an immediate fix for the financial problem. While graduate loans do not necessarily fix that problem long term, at least until school is over the debt does not come into effect. The other benefits of getting graduate loans are the time that can be dedicated towards schooling rather than focused on making ends meet and being able to do so rather comfortably. Similar to student loans, they are a good choice if finances will be more stable later on and debts are more easily approached.
The problem that is common with grants (especially state or privately sponsored) is that they tend to have incredibly competitive applications. It is not uncommon to get a grant from a private organization for a year or two, and then to have that grant suddenly taken away without any notice. The same is true of scholarships, however there is a much larger pool upon which a prospective graduate student could prey for money. The other downside is the possibility of a crisis ruining all your academic prospects. For example, if a family member were to pass away and your were so overcome by grief that you had to drop out of school, you would suddenly find yourself owing the school (or government) the money that they gave you to succeed in school.
All this being said, graduate loans are the easiest, if not the best choice for financial aid when attempting to attend graduate school. They are far better than bad credit loans and although graduate loans have several immediate, short-term benefits, graduate loans also have potential long term problems. However, the other options are highly competitive and choices can be limited. If you are not sure whether graduate loans are for you, ask some friends who have taken out some graduate loans or find some reviews of others’ experiences with graduate loans.
