<p>"All colleges are not created equal, at least where student loan debt is concerned. Some schools have higher average debt incurred by their students than others.</p>
<p>The Project on Student Debt recently revealed the worst colleges and universities for student debt. And the numbers are shocking ...</p>
<p>... The high-debt private nonprofit colleges listed here have average debt from $40,400 to $55,250. Tuition and fees at these colleges range from $11,300 to $38,750, with five of the 20 colleges charging less than the national average for this sector.</p>
<p>Check out our slide show of the worst schools for student debt in alphabetical order."</p>
<p>I looked at the top 20 and read the article. I’m not sure I fully understand how they came up with their numbers. It would be a much better article if they told how they arrived at these figures.</p>
<p>I question the numbers and the care with which they were compiled. One of the low-debt colleges listed is Governors State, which is an Illinois public. But it’s an upper-division-only public, and I strongly suspect that the student debt total is for the debt incurred only while at that school - IOW for two years instead of four.</p>
<p>What I think you are (or should be) trying to get at is financial cost (not debt) vs. added earning power. </p>
<p>Financial cost would be the true cost of school. The average amount of debt students graduate with is misleading, and not reflective of the actual amount paid to go to college. If a school regularly attracts wealthy students with parents ready to shell out close to the full cost, it will produce graduates who have paid more, but end up with less debt. On the other side, you could have a cheaper school with a lower-income student body that results in higher average debt per student upon graduation. The same student choosing between each of these schools faces very different situations.</p>
<p>It’s also important to look at true cost of education relative to expected gains on a school-by-school basis. The truth is, career prospects do differ by school and field. The average graduate would be OK with 120k of debt after 4 years IF they could reasonably expect a starting salary of 60k. The problem is that few can. Some schools cost a lot, and are worth it. Not all debt is bad. Other schools cost a lot and leave grads without improved job prospects. Understand that a free ride to a crappy school may not cost a truckload of money, but it still wastes 4 years.</p>
<p>I don’t agree with this for student debt at all. Parents of college age kids can take the approach of analyzing what the cost/value is and if they are willing to take on debt given their current point in life. Students have to look at the debt over a much shorter period of time. For example, I student graduating at 21 or 22 will not hit their earning power stride until they are in their late twenties perhaps early thirties. Meanwhile they have a decade at lower income. A decade where they are trying to establish independence, perhaps getting married and perhaps even starting a family. Their costs are high and their income is low…having a huge debt load right out of the gate can be debilitating. The context of high-debt colleges has everything to do with who is carrying that debt. The full pay kids and the kids that receive financial aid or have debt get the exact same degree form the exact same college with the exact same posted costs, good college, bad college it doesn’t matter…the difference is what happens in the decade after college.</p>
<p>I don’t even get the point here–the colleges aren’t forcing anyone to incur any amount of debt. A more accurate headline would be The Private Schools with the Most Financially Foolish Students.</p>
<p>momofthreeboys - I think the first paragraph I offered addresses your post.</p>
<p>I agree with MommaJ - debt is a choice! It never needs to be debilitating. Students should readily accept debt when it makes sense to do so, and walk away when it doesn’t. Saying no is the hard part. The higher education industry has a lot of very good sales people trying to sell a dream.</p>
<p>I’ve heard of College of Creative Studies, Florida Institute of Tech, Kettering and NYU.</p>
<p>I personally know people who are grads of CCS, FIT and Kettering. The guy I know that graduated from FIT works on Wall Street with computers after working at NASA and is financially very well off.</p>
<p>The 3 people I know that went to CCS or Kettering all work in Detroit for the big 3/Delphi. They love their work and rave about the schools. Kettering has work-study program with GM and the school is very well known around Michigan.</p>
<p>D’Youville is a fairly small school in Buffalo, NY known mostly for health related majors. I was surprised to see them on the high loan list as they offer generous automatic scholarships. They have a number of combined BS/MS type majors though so perhaps the numbers include the grad years too. If they operate like my D’s school, neither degree is conferred until the end of the program.</p>
<p>Annasdad: Governors State is notorious for its student loan-based revenue generation operation, rivalling local for profit schools’ “get loan & drop-out” reputations. Many of those loans are probably fraudulent, where student obtains loan for tuition AND LIVING EXPENSES, takes check (often giving cut to ringleader), and never/rarely attending school much less actually graduating. </p>
<p>Governors is a minority-predominant public university often in local press due to corrupt administration’s actions, for it’s very low graduation rate, and for it’s political clout based hiring policies. Student achievement and graduate rate are its least important priority. I’m not surprised that it’s included on list of “highest student loan totals”, only that it’s on the private school list.</p>
<p>When I read all of the various disclaimers in that article I am not sure what the analysis tells us. If you attend a more expensive college you are more likely graduate with higher debt???..</p>
<p>…things like "Our analysis suggests that the available campus-level data are not reliable enough to rank individual colleges with especially high or low debt levels. However, we have identified colleges with reported debt levels that fall into high or low ranges relative to the levels reported by all institutions. These lists illuminate the high and low ends of the spectrum for colleges reporting student debt data "…???</p>
<p>I think what they mean is that they’re listing school alphabetically as they didn’t feel the data was reliable enough to say X College has the highest debt, etc.</p>
<p>The article makes HUGE points for those in my region. </p>
<p>PA is HIGH for National Debt Load. We have a large number of schools on the list - both private (St Joe, Widner) and public (Penn State, Temple). These are all name brand schools in the Philly region. Ask the average HS senior or thier parents and you’ll discover my area has come to ACCEPT the large debt as the only way to attend college much in the same way we accept $200,000 is an average housing price. </p>
<p>I’ve stated before on these boards how high our CC tuition + fees are – they exceed the cost of 4 yr state schools in other regions.</p>
<p>Too many accept these high figures of debt as the cost of getting a job. Frankly, until I found these boards I would have accepted it too. I was not educated enough to know as an OOS student my kids could pay LESS money than we do to IS schools.</p>