Retired WSU administrator Mary Jo Gonzales lights viral spark with story of student loan forgiveness
By Shawn Vestal,
Spokane S-R 7/31/2022
Mary Jo Gonzales borrowed about $90,000 to earn the graduate degrees that would allow her to pursue a career in higher education.
A year or so after she received her doctorate
from Washington State University, in 2002, she consolidated those various loans
and a decade’s worth of accumulated interest into one large lump sum – about
$133,000 to be repaid over 33 years.
This year, after her retirement from a
distinguished career serving first-generation and low-income students in higher
education and after making payments for more than two decades, her remaining
principal was $94,000.
“During those 20 years,” she wrote in a recent
social media post, “I repaid more than two times the original loan balance.”
Gonzales, who retired for medical reasons as
vice president of student affairs at Washington State University last November,
recently was approved for the Biden administration’s expanded student loan
forgiveness program.
She posted about it on LinkedIn, and her words
went viral – the story of a university vice president whose student debt
outlasted her career reached more than 10,000 people, she said last week. She’s
heard from people all over the country who are carrying massive debt while
making little progress on the hamster wheel of interest payments.
Gonzales knew she was taking on a long-term
responsibility when she borrowed to get an education. She hadn’t realized at
the front end, though, how high interest and lower income-based payments would
combine to make it so she literally did not put a dent in the principal year
after year.
“I knew I was mortgaging my future,” Gonzales
said. “What I didn’t know was how that interest would escalate my loan payment.
… I really thought I could pay it off sooner.”
Gonzales made a very good salary since 2017 at
WSU – more than $270,000 in her final year. She understands that many people
might look askance at her receiving loan forgiveness.
But her circumstances were complicated when
she came down last year with sepsis, a serious blood infection from which she’s
still recovering. And the loan forgiveness program is not intended as hardship
relief, but a way of encouraging people to go into fields like education or
nonprofit work and rewarding those who are diligent about repayment over at
least a decade.
The repayment amount for her consolidated loan
was based on earlier, much lower incomes, she said. During the past few years
at WSU, she continued making those automatic payments while trying to eliminate
other debts and pay for her daughter’s undergraduate education at WSU, she
said.
At age 53, she planned to keep working and
paying off the loan. But when she was forced to retire, her income vanished and
future job prospects became uncertain.
“I didn’t make the decision to apply for
federal loan forgiveness until I couldn’t work in my position anymore,” she
said. “I was mortified that I couldn’t continue to pay it the way I had
intended to.”
‘This backpack’
Her debt was erased under a temporary
expansion of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which forgives
student loan debts for people in public-service jobs who have made payments for
at least a decade, while meeting other conditions.
The program was temporarily expanded last year
to allow people to seek waivers for exceptions – such as a missed payment or
the forgiveness of a type of loan previously not included.
Before 2021, more than 460,000 people had
their debt forgiven, which represents less than 3% of all applicants, according
to the Education Data Initiative. In 2021, another 30,000 borrowers had their
debts forgiven under the temporary expansion, with an average debt of more than
$66,000.
Less than 7% of eligible borrowers apply. One
reason Gonzales shared her experiences publicly was to let more people know
they may qualify, she said. The expanded PSLF guidelines are set to expire
later this year.
Gonzales received her approval on June 5,
letting her know that her student loan balance had been reduced from more than
$94,000 to zero.
“There had always been this backpack on my
back,” Gonzales said. “It was amazing to be able to put it down after 20
years.”
Gonzales’ experience says a lot about the way
our system of higher ed works – and doesn’t work – for young people without
means or a family tradition of attending college.
After decades of declining state support for
colleges, and a steep erosion of nonloan aid such as the federal Pell Grant,
the educational pathway for first-generation, low-income students is simply
littered with ways to accumulate debt – some of which are more expensive than
others.
Gonzales grew up in Hollister, California, and
her family worked in the area’s agriculture industry; she graduated with a
bachelor’s degree from San Jose State University with relatively little debt –
just $5,000.
But she wanted to go on to a career in
academia, helping to support students of color, low-income students and others
who struggled to succeed – students who faced some of the same challenges she
had as a first-generation Mexican American student.
To do this, some of her borrowing was
unsubsidized. Interest on those unsubsidized loans began accruing right away,
and continued to do so over the course of the next nine years, as she worked
toward a master’s and then a doctorate while raising her daughter as a single
mom. This unpaid interest grew and grew, and was eventually tacked onto the
principal.
She knew these loans would take a long time to
repay. But, like many students who come from low-income, paycheck-to-paycheck
backgrounds, she didn’t have a full understanding of the long-term consequences
and the effects of high interest rates.
And college itself is simply loaded with costs
that can take students with little support by surprise – extra materials for
class, the expectation of working unpaid internships, even graduation itself is
expensive. She felt compelled to go into a career helping those students.
“I saw my debt as a part of my investment in
being able to do what I was called to do,” she said.
‘I’ve worked my whole career’
After graduating from Washington State with a
Ph.D. in educational leadership in 2002, she got a job at Dickinson State
University in Dickinson, N.D., as its director of TRIO programs to support
disadvantaged students.
That was when she consolidated her loans, and
set up the income-based payment. She had a total of $119,000 in loans; the
unpaid interest from her unsubsidized loans was then capitalized and another
$14,000 was added to the principal.
Full payments would have been impossible on
her salary at that point; her 33-year repayment agreement called for monthly
payments of $700 – 15% of her income.
Her career proceeded, and she took on bigger
jobs with more responsibility. At Iowa State, she oversaw a campuswide program
to help support and retain low-income, first-generation students and students
of color. She became dean of students at the University of Rhode Island, and
was temporarily vice president there.
Her payment was adjusted upward to $827 in
2008, which was 10% of her income at that point; it had not been adjusted
since. She returned to WSU in 2017 as vice president of student services.
As a university administrator at different
schools, she said, she often felt alone among decision-makers in understanding
how casual, continual increases in tuition and fees affect students who come
from poverty. While some of her colleagues minimized the impact of seemingly small
cost increases, she knew about the long-term ramifications because she was
still making monthly payments on hers.
Her background, and her continuing loan debt,
served as a reminder of what she calls “one of the most fundamental leadership
lessons about” college affordability – the enormity of the gap in experience
between those who arrive from generational poverty versus those with
generational wealth.
She said that she believes it’s important as a
matter of principle to pay debts, and that she felt some guilt about seeking
loan forgiveness. But as she noted, she has paid more than twice the original
principal – while still owing essentially the same amount.
Gonzales’s loan was forgiven, but she also
feels her debt was paid – through the huge interest payments, through her
service to college students, through philanthropic work she has done.
“I had to rationalize in my head that it was
OK,” she said. “People see ‘loan forgiveness’ and think it’s a gift. No, I’ve
worked my whole career to pay off that loan
(PHOTO:
Mary Jo Gonzales, right, and her daughter Lucinda Gonzales.)
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/jul/31/shawn-vestal-retired-wsu-administrator-lights-vira/
