Japan Press Weekly

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2017 January 11 - 17 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Parents worrying about children’s future debts avoid ‘scholarship’ loans

A university co-op survey released on January 10 shows that parents of this spring’s university freshmen have tended to avoid applying for “scholarship” loans.

The National Federation of University Co-operative Associations (NFUCA) surveyed about 71,000 parents whose children will enter university or collage this coming spring.

According to its survey, the percentage of respondents whose children applied for the loan scholarship went down by 4.0 points over the past five years. On the other hand, 34.9% answered they cut into their savings, which was up 5.9 points from five years ago.

Most scholarships at present provide loans to students, not grants. Therefore, borrowers have to pay them back after graduation. Worrying about their children’s future payment installments, many parents stay away from using the scholarship and instead use their savings to pay for school expenses.

In addition, nearly half of the total pointed to national or public universities as higher education institutions to which they hope their children will enter. The majority of parents seem to pay close attention to the cost for their children’s education.

The average of the total cost of enrolling their children in universities, which includes exam expenses, rent, deposit, all daily necessities, and the first year payments, was more than 1.68 million yen for public universities and about 1.74 million yen as for private universities.

Past related articles:
> Young people in Japan are struggling with repayment of so-called ‘scholarship’ loans [February 23, 2016]
> Grad students survey displays their financial difficulties [December 24 & 25, 2013]
> Gov’t should stop harsh collection of scholarship loans: JCP Miyamoto [April 1&2, 2013]