91��Ƭ��

By G.K. Schatzman

For Schultz and many other alumni of 91��Ƭ�� and its predecessor institutions, thousands of dollars of federal student loan debt have been wiped clear by the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF), thanks to responsive financial advice from Drexel’s executive director of financial planning, Michael R. Clancy, MBA, CFP, CLU. The PSLF program, launched in 2007 to encourage continued service in high-needs public sector work, has proven notoriously elusive as college-educated medical staff, government employees, educators and not-for-profit workers have tried to cash in on the promise after over a decade of service. According to the Department of Education¹, the program “forgives the remaining balance on your Direct Loans after you have made 120 qualifying monthly payments under a qualifying repayment plan while working full-time for a qualifying employer.”

Findings from the Government Accountability Office² that “the PSLF program had denial rates upwards of 99%” in 2017 suggest that the keyword here is, indeed, “qualifying.” Many financial advisors, perhaps anticipating a reversal or failure of the PSLF program, pushed graduates to aggressively pay down their loans in key early career years. According to Schultz, some of her colleagues are regretting it. “I know people who graduated the same year of medical school as I did but were given bad advice from their medical school,” Schultz says. “They were told that public service loan forgiveness wouldn’t really be a thing and that they should pay their loans down aggressively. And those people obviously missed out on several hundred thousand dollars of loan forgiveness. I’m very grateful I went to Drexel and that I was given the best advice.”

When it comes to loan forgiveness, access to solid financial advice can make a six-figure difference. Fortunately, alumni from Drexel and its predecessor institutions can take advantage of the school’s financial planning services long after graduation to navigate key financial goals and challenges, from marriage and mortgages to debt and taxes. Clancy, who is a certified financial planner, offers free one-on-one consultations to help them navigate those often-choppy straits. For Schultz, Clancy has been a trusted personal contact through big financial decisions. “Physicians are not always given the same financial skills as other more corporate fields,” Schultz says. Though she remembers taking detailed notes during group financial advice sessions in medical school, she also remembers feeling overwhelmed by it all. At that stage, there were just so many things to focus on other than debt.

DRAWN TO SERVE

What drew Schultz to medical school was a combination of care and fascination for a topic she stumbled upon partway through her undergraduate study at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster: infectious disease. While all people are generally capable of attracting infectious diseases, Schultz is one of the few for whom the attraction is mutual. “When I was a junior in college, I took a course on tuberculosis, and I loved it so much that I said to the professor, ‘Man, I’m pre-med, but I wish there were doctors that only took care of people with infections,’” she recalls. Upon being informed that there are, in fact, doctors who do just that, she set her sights on medical school and infectious disease as a specialty.

Working with infectious disease has offered countless opportunities for Schultz to give back to her home city of Philadelphia, particularly around harm reduction. While at Drexel, she worked with the Streetside program from the nonprofit harm-reduction organization Prevention Point Philadelphia. “It was really my first taste of what street medicine looks like and of the infections associated with injection drug use,” she says. “I saw how a lot of patients were heavily stigmatized, and how the medical community doesn’t always treat people who use drugs with the dignity that they deserve.” That stigma compounds for patients with HIV, for which injection drug use is a risk factor.