College students increasingly worried over finances: study

Yahoo Finance’s Adam Shapiro and Seana Smith speak with Aarthi Swaminathan about the growing worries among some college students over their finances.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well, you also get quite a bit of traction with the stories you write about the student debt load that so many millions of Americans are dealing with. Now there's the issue of those still in school running out of money.

AARTHI SWAMINATHAN: Right. So about 40%-- I think 40% of college students in one specific survey said that they don't even have enough money to last until the semester. That's really concerning. So not only are they feeling that my education is not even worth how much I spend but also they're really worried about existing-- 1/3 of them have decided to take on an extra job just to help out with the family expenses and stuff like that.

But once they graduate, what are they going to graduate into, a recession? That's going to be really difficult for them to pay back the student loans that they had taken on. So it's kind of gloomy to be a college student. I'm seeing a lot of tweets and a lot of pain out there. But hopefully things turn around and they can get back on track.

SEANA SMITH: Aarthi, there certainly is a lot of pain out there just in terms of the projections for student loans because right now it stands around $1.7 trillion. Has the coronavirus really added to the growth that we're expecting to see, at least in the short term, because of the pandemic?

AARTHI SWAMINATHAN: So if there's one thing that the Trump administration did right was pause for interest on student loans. So we're not going to see that number expanded-- maybe for private student loans and those who haven't been affected by that pause. But by and large, that's one thing that people-- like, they haven't been paying back on student loans. But come January 1, we will see how that plays out because that expires, and we could see mass defaults. But we don't know yet how that would play out.

ADAM SHAPIRO: All right, Aarthi, we're awaiting President Trump to brief us all on the latest COVID-19 news, so we say thank you, Aarthi.