Maya Chavis, Lead Campus Organizer for Rise North Carolina, was recently featured in a video produced by the American Issues Initiative on her experience with student debt featuring Trevor Jackson, star of the Freeform series Grownish. This comes on the heels of her recent Op-ed on the subject for Ignite National. Watch the video and read her article below!
‘We need to Rethink the Normalization of Student Debt‘ by Maya Chavis
“As a 21-year-old first generation college student in Durham, I want us to do more to make the cost of college affordable for everyone across the state and the country. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been out trying to make sure young people are registered to vote on my campus, because I want our elected representatives to hear from us that crippling student debt when we graduate is compromising our futures. Many of us are struggling to even stay in school with the cost of attending college so high.
Since last December, North Carolina has offered the Next NC Scholarship, covering all tuition and fees for community college and some state university students, from families making under $80,000. Students attending a community college will get $3,000 and those attending a public university in North Carolina will get a minimum of $5,000. That’s a start. But it comes too late for students like me, and the income threshold is too low. Students whose two parents earn more than $40,000 a year can’t get financial aid at all. Many students in that position are telling me they’re less worried about paying off their student loans when they graduate, and more worried about staying in school each semester.”
Read the full article here.
