Coping with college costs

Mary Lovell's dreams are coming true. She just hopes she can pay for them.

A student at the Academy for Math, Engineering and Science charter school, she has been accepted to Simmons College, a prestigious women's institution in Boston that has a top physical-therapy program — her planned field of study.

Lovell is teaching gymnastics this summer to help save for college, and she has some $12,000 in scholarships in hand. That leaves $29,000 she has to come up with. And that's just for the first year.

"I wouldn't mind having a wealthy benefactor," said Lovell, grinning. She is the youngest of six children being raised by a single mother. "It's like, I want to write Oprah and say, 'This is my situation."'

Lovell's situation is becoming more common as college costs are rising. Scholarships, grants and federal student loans might not keep up. Students are facing bigger education debt — the average Utah college student owes $15,000 in federal loans alone at graduation. They also are seeking more private student loans, whose variable interest rates can be tough to navigate and ultimately make students' debt load worse than it needs to be.

There also is a growing concern that fewer students nationally will be able to secure loans for the coming academic year.

Congress has cut subsidies to banks offering federal student loans by about $40 billion in the past two years. The loss of those subsidies, along with mortgage defaults and the nation's credit crisis, has led to some 60 banks nationwide dropping the loans because they are no longer profitable.

"I am thrilled for my students getting these great scholarships to go to Vassar or Westminster or the University of Utah," said the charter school's principal, Al Church. "I think that's the purpose of every early-college high school principal — it's their dream. I guess my question is, how do these middle-class families afford it?"

Annual tuition at Utah's public four-year institutions has nearly doubled to $3,440 in the past decade, according to the Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority, which answers to the Utah Board of Regents. For many students, savings and scholarships may not cover that increase or additional expenses of books, room and board.

Nationally, the number of college students taking out federal loans jumped from about 25 percent in 1995 to 33 percent in 2004, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The average loan in 2004 was about $4,900, up about $1,000 since 1995.

In the 2007 fiscal year, the Utah authority issued $502 million in federal loans. With these loans came increasing debt for students.