Beliefs about debt and income. Students were asked both about how long
it will take them to pay off their credit-card debt and how long they think it
will take the average student to repay credit-card debt. Responses on the
5-point scale ranged from I (or the average student) will pay it off this month
or next to I (or the average student) will pay it off more than 2 years after
college graduation. The average student response was subtracted from their
personal responses to create a composite score that ranged from -4 to 1 4.
Of those students with debt, 266 (73%) believed that it would take them
less time than the average student to get out of debt. An additional 75 (21%)
thought that it would take them the same amount of time that it would take
the average student, and only 22 (6%) thought that it would take them
longer than the average student to get out of debt.
A similar calculation was computed for expected income and the average
student’s income immediately after graduation. In this case, 103 (23%) expected
that they would be earning less than average, 192 (43%) thought that
they would be earning the average amount, and 151 (33%) thought that they
would earn more than the average student. Among those with debt, 50
(18%) thought that they would be earning less than average, 113 (47%)
thought that they would be earning the average amount, and 76 (32%)
thought that they would earn more than the average student.
Getting out of debt. When asked what they would do if they found
themselves in a great deal of debt (over $10,000), 203 (45%) said that it was
likely or very likely that their parents would help them out. When asked
what action they would be most likely to take, 254 (57%) said that they
would pay what they could during college, but plan to pay the rest off after