Crimson and Gold Connection; Ashley Wadell

Welcome to Crimson & Gold Connection. I am Dustin Triber. Today's guest is Ashley Woodell. She's the Student Success Counselor here at Pittsburgh State University. Ashley, welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do here at Pittsburgh State University. Sure, well I work over in the Student Success Center at an acts library, but I also am an unclassified staff senator and and past president of that organization. And today you've come in and you've agreed to talk to us about the public service loan forgiveness program, which I try to read some of the details that goes a little bit above my head. So I'm bringing in the expert. I mean you've actually given a presentation or been giving presentations on this. So I'm told you were the person to ask all the questions about this. Oh, wow. So explain what this is and and help me and others who may be confused about what this program does. Well, it's funny that you think that I'm the expert because I am definitely not an expert, but I was looking for ways to help reduce my student loan debt myself. And I stumbled across the public service loan forgiveness program and found out

that I qualified and then started to do some more research and found out that everybody who works for Pittsburgh State would qualify. And then I found out that my husband who is a public school teacher would qualify and my dad who was a firefighter would qualify for this program. And so I came to the unclassified staff Senate. And I said, I think this is something that we need to share with folks because they may not know that this program exists. And then also like you said, it's very confusing. And there's a lot of details out there. And so I thought, well, maybe if we had a way that we were helping to educate folks on campus about the program and what makes them eligible and how to continue to be eligible, that that would be a benefit for our staff and faculty on campus. So that's kind of where we started with this whole thing. And we're actually hosting a workshop in December, December the 14th in the Medellar crew in the student center at noon. It's a brown bag lunch and we're going to invite people to come and learn more about the program. And so they can maybe get some questions answered too. And real quick, is this open to

just Pittsburgh State University staff or open to anybody for the public? I'd say anybody can come. We'd welcome everybody. But it's primarily geared towards folks on campus. But certainly anybody who thinks that they are in public service probably should learn a little bit more about the program. So we'd welcome anybody who wants to join us. All right. Oh, tell us a little bit about the program. What is what are we doing here? Sure. Yeah. So from what I understand and again, I'm not the expert. But I've gone through the steps myself to see if I would qualify and everything. So that's where my experience comes from. But basically it's a program that the Department of Education created to help encourage people who plan to work in public service jobs, which we know are historically lower paying than jobs in the private sector help to encourage them to take jobs in the public sector into remain in the public sector during their careers, despite maybe having loan debt that they don't have as much income to be repaying more quickly. And so basically the first group of people who would be eligible for

this program could start seeing the benefit in 2017. So and then there's different features of the program that you have to do in order to make sure that you qualify. So the big ones are you have to have 120 on-time payments, which that's 10 years. You know, if your math is something you struggle with 12 times 10. There we go. So you have to have 120 on-time payments that are qualified payments, which there's lots of things that make a payment qualified or not qualified. And so that's one of the things we hope to cover in our workshop. But there's good information out there online too that has what makes a qualifying payment or what defines that. You have to be in what they call a qualifying loan payment program. So a traditional loan pay off is 10 years, right? So if you just do the standard repayment plan is what it's called, you'd have the loan paid off in 10 years. So then there wouldn't be any loan to forgive after 10 years. But there are payment plans that you can participate in that lower your monthly payment every month. But they

typically extend the length of time that you pay off that loan. So you and these are called income-based repayment plans, which it makes sense. So if you're in a public service field where you may not be receiving a super high salary, you go on an income-based repayment plan that reduces your monthly payment that you have to make. And then after 10 years, whatever's left over would be paid off through this loan forgiveness program. And you have to work in the public sector for all 120 of your payments or that entire 10 years. And then there's some weird caveats because programs like this, I think, can be confusing. And there's lots of exceptions to rules and things that make a rule still qualify. And so those are the things that, you know, we would have just encouraged people to get some help with. And, you know, I can help people find those answers or at least direct them to where to start to begin to find the answers. All right. On question here, my loans are paid off. Good for you. Yeah, but so it's not going to help me, I assume. Right. Right. So it would be

for somebody who has loan debt currently, not it's not retroactive. So you would have to still have student loan debt in order to qualify for the program. Why kind of loans are out there? And how do you even begin starting this process? Yeah. So there are lots of different federal student loan programs. And basically depending on when you were in school and when you took out your loans, tells us sort of what type of loans you have, the student loan for forgiveness program for public service employees is only for what they call direct loans. And there are other types of loans that don't qualify. But because there's always exceptions, you can have the option to consolidate other types of federal student loans, not private loans, but federal loans into direct loans through loan consolidation. And then those new loans then qualify for the program. But the downside is your 120 payments starts from when you consolidate the loans. So it's not a great benefit for people who are

a year from paying off their debt. But for people who may be just graduated and still have a long road ahead as far as paying off their student loans goes, this is a good option for them. And then how to get started, you know, I think the best place to begin is to go to studentlones.gov. And you have to create what's called an FSA ID, which is a verified basically log in account. Get into your account and see what types of loans you have. So you know if you qualify or not. And then you can go in and decide whether or not you want to consolidate your loans if they don't qualify into those direct loan consolidation. And then begin the process from there. So, you know, a quick internet search on the federal Department of Education website will bring up lots of good information about public service loan forgiveness. Thank you so much for all that information. And again, you know, this workshop you're doing is when is December the 14th. It's a Wednesday at noon in the medallar room in the Overman Student Center here on Pittsburgh State

University. Ashley, what else? Thank you so much for coming in and talking to us about this the public service loan forgiveness program. And we encourage everybody go out there and talk to you, ask questions on the 14th. Yeah, absolutely. We'd love to see lots of new faces there. I'm Dustin Driver. Thank you for listening to Crimson and Gold Connection.