Borrowing The Future: The Role Of Student Debt In Undergraduate Students’ Postgraduate Life

Student loan repayment can impact individual’s financial outcomes and well-being. Life course theory suggests these impacts may result from how loan repayment interacts with live events, transition periods, and broader context in an individual’s life. This paper highlights the experiences of recent college graduates as they navigate entering loan repayment simultaneously with other life changes after college graduation. Many borrowers in our study entered repayment as the COVID-related payment pause ended. In addition to these federal policy changes, borrowers in our study experienced profound changes in their employment status, health, and social lives after graduation. As time passed, these life changes and external policy contexts grew more salient, leading to changes in borrowers’ repayment goals.