Graduation Guide 2015

Cheung: Graduates should take advantage of NY loan forgiveness program

Graduating college can be scary for a lot of reasons, but the biggest scare for most students is loans. If unmanaged, they can haunt graduates for decades as interest accrues. But if you’re planning on staying in New York state after graduation, a new program could help you tackle those loans.

In late April lawmakers passed a budget for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Get On Your Feet Loan Forgiveness Program. Under the program, New York state will pay for any outstanding loans for a student’s first two years out of school, giving graduates the opportunity to start their careers without panicking about piling debt.

Syracuse University graduates should strongly consider signing up for the new program if they meet all the requirements. Especially for those fretting over how to handle loans when moving to New York City (where living costs are astronomical), the Get On Your Feet Loan Forgiveness program would provide relief so that graduates can focus on starting their careers.

In order to be eligible for the program graduates need to meet three key requirements. The first is that you must attend college in New York and continue to live in the state after graduation. You also must earn less than $50,000 annually in your job following graduation. Lastly, you must be a participant in the federal Pay As You Earn (PAYE) loan repayment program.

The PAYE program allows graduates to structure their loan repayment by taking 10 percent of their income each year for 20 years, with any outstanding loan after those 20 years being forgiven. For the first two years after graduation, the Get On Your Feet program would cover any debt not already covered by the PAYE program.



The program comes as Governor Cuomo continues to push his vision for a more economically prosperous New York state. Part of that plan involves keeping college graduates in the state and matching them with New York employers. The Get On Your Feet program incentivizes staying in the state by trying to alleviate the growing student debt problem. The governor’s office says three out of five students in New York graduate with student debt, with average debt of $25,537.
The Class of 2015 will be the first class eligible for the program. The plan will cost an estimated $41 million annually and hopes to cover about 7,100 graduates this year with expected growth in enrollment to 24,000 by 2019-2020.

Because the program was only recently passed, the state is still working on setting up a system to sign up for Get On Your Feet Loan Forgiveness. But checking in with the SU financial aid office will help you get plugged in to all the appropriate information when it is available.

Paying loans are never fun, but coming up with a strategy to pay off debt now will pay big rewards in the future. New York state’s new program could be the first step.  

Brian Cheung is a senior broadcast and digital journalism and finance dual major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at bkcheung@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @bcheungz.





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