The info in that article should be considered by all families facing choices amg various levels of debt load for different colleges.
From my family’s experience/real outcomes, the low cost/debt-free option has not limited employability, salary, or had any negative consequences. Reading the posts of “pie in the sky, my career will be a rocket ship to the top as long as I graduate from XXX” need to be tempered by the reality of employment statistics.
My kids don’t fit the profile of the students in the article. I think having zero debt has given them a huge leap forward.
My family members’ kids do fit the profile. Their kids have lots of debt, live at home with mom and dad or in apartments with roommates, and struggle paycheck to paycheck.
Ignoring how debt impacts life is just not prudent. The real scenario at the end of the 4 yrs needs to weigh in heavily at the beginning of the process, not postponed until it becomes a reality. The debt will be very concrete reality. Connections to someone else’s coat tails making none of it matter–maybe not so much.
^^
I think some go to grad school or law school to delay the inevitable when jobs are scarce…plus it delays their student loans. Obviously this is risky since more debt is being taken on, but I guess the thinking (hoping) is that by the time they graduate, jobs will become more available and they’ll be able to pay off the bigger debt?
I remember when my older brother was graduating in the late 70s and there were few eng’g jobs. He luckily was able to turn an internship into a job, but many of his peers weren’t so lucky. High tech job demands started in the early 80s…when suddenly companies were hiring any warm body they could.
Although the first article mentions the class of 2008, getting a job at graduation was probably worse for the class of 2009. Of course, specific industries could be hit harder than others. The 2008 downturn was particularly bad for 2009 civil engineering and architecture graduates, for example.
Yes, graduate or professional school can be a way to delay entry into the job market if bachelor’s degree graduation happens during an economic downturn, but if it is not funded (like a PhD program), that would mean additional cost and debt, which can be risky if the economy has not turned back up by the time of graduate or professional degree graduation.
In my area unemployment is down, ( 4.3%) and profs I know at the community colleges are beating the bushes for students so they don’t have to cut their hours.
Community college may be a counter-cyclical in demand in that during economic downturns, more unemployed people look to community colleges for education to prepare to switch careers into something that may have better job prospects (or figure that completing an unfinished degree while the job market is bad makes more sense than when the job market is good).
Of course state budget issues as they relate to funding (or lack thereof) can affect how much can be supplied.