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T A B L E_ T A L K

Incoming freshman seeks advice. Ask questions, give answers in the Education area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

Creeps on campus
By Dawn MacKeen
Do bad guys have a right to higher education?
(10/09/98)

My crabs or yours?
By Dan Stern
Protecting yourself from the creatures of the sexual swamp
(10/07/98)

Ask Camille
By Camille Paglia
Trouncing feminist film criticism and its cadre of ass-kissing puritans
(10/07/98)

Scholars of smut
By Carina Chocano
World Pornography Conference: Academics cheer as porn stars theorize
(10/05/98)

Escaping college poverty
By Hank Hyena
If this campus parasite can make money and get laid, you can too
(10/02/98)

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Those with more finely honed survival skills are often drawn to passive resistance. One approach is not to fill out the final paperwork for graduation. It's just as easy as not answering the phone, and it can even be turned into a political stand. After all, they made you pay $100,000 to do homework, the least they can do is add up your credits for you, right? But this won't fool your creditors for long. If you read the fine print on your loan agreement (if you still have it, that is) you'll find that most loans require you to begin repayment by a certain date, whether or not you've got the diploma in your grubby little hands.

If civil disobedience is not your style, moving to a federally designated disaster area is an excellent option. One former student happened to be living in Portland, Ore., during severe winter flooding, and even though she was perfectly able to take the bus to her waitressing job every day, her loan company informed her that she'd won a few months forbearance courtesy of the federal government. Granted, a few months isn't much, but with a little planning and the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, you could make disaster chasing a way of life. Think about it: spring in the Mississippi Valley, summer on the Gulf Coast, winter on the Great Plains. All you need is a hardy constitution and few possessions and family ties, and you're in business.

Of course, if you want to be responsible about getting yourself out of debt, you might consider joining the AmeriCorps program. This home-front version of the Peace Corps puts you to work serving various community needs, from teaching to protecting the environment, and there are local programs across the United States. Another former student-in-debt signed up for nine months of teaching inner-city Philadelphians to read. For a 50-hour work week, she received a $150 stipend, plus health insurance, and when she was done, she got a $4,725 education award that she put toward the $20,000 she owed in student loans.

And there's always deferment or, even better, cancellation. If you're a part- or full-time graduate student, you can defer payment on Stafford and Perkins loans and waive the interest while you're in school. And if you can prove economic hardship or that you're unable to find full-time employment, you may be able to defer payment for up to three years. Volunteers in the Peace Corps can also defer their Stafford loans and even receive a 15 percent cancellation of the balance on their Perkins loans with each year of service.

But forget indentured servitude for a minute. We've saved the best news for last. If you happened to tune in to this year's State of the Union address, you might have been shocked to hear a useful bit of information for a change. Starting with your 1998 federal income tax return, you can deduct up to $1,000 of the interest on your education loans. And by 2001, the amount of deduction will be $2,500. Given how little most recent college graduates make a year, this break might even bump you into a lower tax bracket. It seems only fair, considering that some students leave college owing the equivalent of a small mortgage.

Before you head off into the world, there's one wolf-in-sheep's-clothing you should be especially wary of: loan consolidation. You'll get a lot of tempting offers from banks and other lending institutions promising one low monthly payment and only one stamp required. But while a smaller monthly payment might seem like a dream come true, the interest on a consolidated loan is often higher than the interest on your original loans and consolidating usually means stretching repayment out for a longer period of time. If you absolutely can't make your monthly payments, look into it, but who really wants to be paying for college when they're planning retirement.

A final word to the wise: In the United States today, romantic notions about education and self-improvement are the provenance of the very rich or the very naive. If you have a sneaking suspicion that you'd rather be debt-free than read "Ulysses," learn to program computers or go to trade school -- and get a library card.
SALON | Oct. 12, 1998

Kristina Blachere is an assistant editor for CNet and lives in San Francisco.