With student loan debt an issue, one wonders if certificates are the best way to go
On Oct. 18, the Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) reported in a press release that, “Students who borrowed for college and earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011 graduated with an average $26,600 in student loan debt, up from $25,250 in 2010.”
In April, NPR reported that, “the nation’s student loan debt… now exceeds a trillion dollars.”
These statistics aren’t really inspiring much confidence in me and I am second-guessing continuing to go after a bachelor’s degree (an associate’s that I am working on now just doesn’t seem to hold as much weight as it used to). Instead, maybe going for something like a certificate program or ROP seems like a more sensible idea to me.
If I decide to go after a degree, I’d not want to graduate college with a bachelor’s and with $26,000 of debt, especially not in an economy where it’s not easy to find a job even with a degree in hand. It’s how the situation is now, not four years from now. Maybe four years from now things will be different, but I am not inclined to take that gamble. (2008 was not too long ago, and in 2012, four years later, things are still… not so uncertain.)
But whether it’s an associate’s, bachelor’s or master’s degree, the prospects aren’t that bright in my mind when I hear of some rather unpleasant findings. A Rutgers University study reported that, “444 recent graduates in the classes of 2006-2011 found that most of (young college graduates struggling with loan balances) had made little progress in paying down their debt, and nearly half were struggling with credit card debt as well.” Only half were employed full-time.
In other words, graduates were slowly paying off the debt and not working full time. Seems to me getting a degree doesn’t really guarantee anything these days, at least not as much as it may sound at first. And that just reinforces my already unease over what my degree (whatever it may be) is really going to do or not do for me when or if I get it.
So I am inclined to think about going for a certificate program or ROP career training. Doing this, of course, doesn’t solve the question of how to pay for education (the very problem that the student loans are supposed to address). It also raised a question of which ROP career preparation program to go for that will also be interesting to me – I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a job I don’t enjoy. But it seems a more sensible route to get any job right now and use money from it to pay for ROP classes, as opposed to getting in debt and banking on a future that may or may not be. And then, with ROP training and a job, ponder going after a degree.
It seems a safer bet to me than taking out $26,000 or more worth of loans to pay for something that may or may not get me a full time job.