Millennials, and generations that followed, have heard most of the life to graduate high school and go to college. “If you want a good job, you have to go to college.” If you get into a good college, you will make more money. The question I raise is, is going into debt for college worth it?

One of, if not the most prestigious colleges, is Harvard University. With an education from there, you can make so much money, right? The 2022-2023 cost of attendance billed and unbilled is $80,263-$84,413. According to nerdwallet.com, the maximum amount of student loans a student can receive for a private college, like Harvard, is $99,000 (nerdwallet.com). 

When taking out any loan, the interest rate is the most important factor. You are not borrowing, you are buying money. According to educationdata.org, the average student loan payment is $460 a month. “The average student loan accrues $26,000 in interest alone over 20 years”. I strongly encourage you to look at the tables on this website, to get a better understanding of how much time and money it takes to pay off a loan.

“Student loan borrowers in the United States owe a collective nearly $1.75 trillion in federal and private student loan debt as of April 2022, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis” (nerdwallet.com). 

Student debt obviously varies based on the degree obtained. For example, the average debt for a bachelor’s degree is $28,950. This, as said before, varies greatly. For graduate school, the average debt is $71,000. Parent PLUS loan debt is $28,778. Law school debt: $145,500; MBA student debt: $66,300; Medical school debt: $201,490; Dental school debt: $292,169; Pharmacy school debt: $179,514; Veterinary school debt: $183,302. Finally, nursing school debt comes in three waves: $19,928: for Associate Degree Nursing; $23,711: for Bachelor of Science in Nursing; $47,321 for Master of Science in Nursing (nerdwallet.com).

According to educationdata.org, “among today’s college students, 65% graduate with student debt. Between 39% and 50% of indebted student, borrowers have loans from both undergraduate and postgraduate education. Among adults with student loan debt, 93% report borrowing to pay for their own education while 81% report borrowing to pay for a child’s or grandchild’s education. First-generation college students are twice as likely to report they are behind in making student loan payments. Graduates of private, for-profit institutions are more than twice as likely to report late student loan payments”.

All in all, colleges are not that different when it comes to education. The main difference between colleges is the status it brings to attendees. There is no point in going into years and years of debt; paying thousands and thousands of dollars, just to go to college. The absolute first question when looking for colleges should be, “Can I afford it?”. Do not start the beginning of the rest of your life in an immense amount of debt. It will weigh on your shoulders for years. Starting your journey in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt can become an overwhelming domino effect that can haunt you for the rest of your life.