Loan Stress Among Social Work Graduate Students

Background and Purpose: Student loans have become an essential part of financing higher education for many individuals, including graduate students pursuing advanced degrees in fields such as social work. While pursuing a graduate degree can open career opportunities and increase earning potential, it often comes with the burden of significant financial debt. Social work students face unique challenges as they navigate their education and professional development, due to the intersection of course requirements, practicum, and employment. This study seeks to understand the contributing factors of loan stress (concern about paying off student debt) for social work graduate students. We hypothesize that food insecurity, housing insecurity, and lack of financial support all contribute to concern about paying off student loan debt.

Methods: This study used data from the 2022 gradSERU survey, which garnered responses from 1165 graduate and professional students from the University of Iowa. We focused on the responses of Social Work graduate students (n=85). The questions we were most interested in focused on loan stress, food and housing insecurity, financial support satisfaction, and primary source of funding for graduate school. Regressions were conducted to determine how food insecurity, housing insecurity, and satisfaction with financial support were associated with loan stress.

Results: The sample was primarily female (91%), white (76%), had student loans, and the average age of respondents was 34.5. Most (63%) respondents were at least slightly concerned with paying off loans, while over half (62.5%) of respondents were ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ concerned about paying off loans. Over 40% of respondents indicated that loans were their primary source of financial support in paying for graduate school. Many respondents experienced some form of food insecurity (31%) and housing insecurity (49%). Treating loan stress as continuous, we conducted several regression models. The first model included food insecurity and housing insecurity as predictor variables and found that respondents who experienced housing insecurity experienced more loan stress (b= 20.11, p= .039). When adding in satisfaction with financial support and controlling for loans as primary source of financial support, satisfaction with financial support was negatively associated with loan stress (b= -0.49, p < .01) and respondents who used loans as their primary source of support, experienced greater loan stress (b= 18.96, p= .02). However, in this model, housing insecurity was no longer a significant predictor of loan stress.

Conclusions/Implications: Our findings provide evidence that housing insecurity, financial support, and taking out loans as a primary source of financial support contribute to experiencing loan stress for social work graduate students. The findings support that financial stress among social work graduate students is prominent and multifaceted. The current study emphasizes that students who use loans as their primary source of support are most at risk of financial stress that may hinder their academic performance, highlighting the need for targeted interventions that focus on alleviating financial stress for social work students to support their academic and overall wellbeing.