CSC administrator's book tells how to avoid college debt

In a book published earlier this year, “College The No-Debt Way: No-Debt College Grads Share their Secrets,” Adebayo outlines a host of strategies for obtaining financial assistance to pay for higher education and backs up the practicality of those ideas with quotes from students who have used them to graduate from college debt-free.

The book is already finding its way to one segment of its intended audience. “College The No-Debt Way” will be used as a resource in the summer session of Upward Bound program based at Chadron State College, according to Heather Barry, an Upward Bound academic adviser.

Upward Bound is a federally funded program aimed at motivating and supporting high school students from low-income families to further their education. Adebayo is expected to speak to the Upward Bound class June 24. 

Although post-secondary education in the United States can be costly, there are more programs, incentives, and opportunities to graduate without debt than most people realize, Adebayo said.

“If you look at the higher education system all over the world, no country like the United States does the kind of stuff we do,” he said. “There are dozens of ways to get your college education for free.”

Adebayo’s interest in the subject began well before the recent focus on high levels of student debt in America. When he was an adjunct faculty of sociology at Ohio State University in the late 1990s, he discovered several people in his classes were high school students from the local area. Intrigued, he asked the students why they were taking college classes and learned their tuition was paid by their school districts and the course credits they earned would apply to their college degree.

“They said they would save money and avoid massive debt,” Adebayo said. “I thought, ‘Wow, that is fascinating.’ That’s how I got into studying debt-free college grads.”

In speaking with debt-free college graduates, and sometimes their parents, Adebayo said he found some common characteristics.

“Most of them start very early in middle school. They plan,” he said. “They are, for the most part, informed consumers of higher education information.”

That planning gives students the opportunity to find and apply for scholarships that others may not even know about, according to Adebayo. And, while the scholarship application process takes time, it can pay off handsomely.

“One student applied for 14 scholarships. He got six of them and free college,” Adebayo said.

Taking college courses while enrolled in high school and searching for scholarships are just two of the tactics that Adebayo highlights in his book. The debt-free college grads he interviewed also talked about the importance of selecting a college major early, attending an affordable college, and picking a field of study in high demand, among other strategies that helped them graduate debt-free. 

Lack of information is one of the chief reasons students go into debt to pay for college, according to Adebayo. While the availability of student loans is widely known, students have to search for scholarships or other opportunities for financial assistance or tuition reduction.

“Successful graduates who have beaten the odds and avoided massive debt tend to attend affordable public colleges, especially those that provide reasonably priced tuition and fees for both in-state and out-of-state students like Chadron State College,” Adebayo said.

The Chadron State Eagle Rate requires all non-Nebraska resident and international undergraduate students to pay in-state costs plus $1 more per credit hour and publications consistently rank Chadron State as one of the Best Regional Colleges in the Midwest region, Adebayo noted.  

“Most scholarships are not well advertised. You have to go look,” he said.

Adebayo’s book doesn’t offer specifics about scholarship options but provides a guide to general strategies students can use to minimize the cost of their college degree. That’s backed up with plenty of quotes from students who have successfully graduated without taking out loans, and Adebayo said that’s what makes the book valuable.

“I think the best thing is to get the word from the mouths of those who have done it,” he said. “And I use my research to back it up.”

“College The No-Debt Way” is published by Page Publishing, Inc., in New York, New York, and is available from Amazon, iTunes, Google Play and Barnes and Noble. Adebayo is also the author of “Barack Obama By the Numbers.”