We’ve all heard the horror stories. An excited 20 something graduates from her fancy, private university only to be thrust into the cruel world where there are no jobs and her student loans are knocking at the door. She reluctantly moves back in with Mom and Dad, returns to her job at Denny’s and tries to make regular payments on her seemingly impossible $85,000 loan balance. It’s a common scenario, but one that Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) students might not have to deal with.
Granted, the economy isn’t at its best right now and many folks are having trouble finding work. Recent college grads, however, are also dealing with strong feelings of disillusionment. Many young college students grew up during an economic boom. We were raised on the American Dream. We were raised to believe that in order to get that white picket fence, we first had to get a bachelor’s degree.
Unfortunately, basic supply-and-demand dictates that the more common something is, the less valuable it becomes. It would follow, that since a whole generation of people were convinced that a degree was the key to success, having a degree has become ordinary and commonplace, therefore less valuable.
It doesn’t take more than a couple minutes of browsing university Web sites to get a rough idea of the kind of debt in which a student could find him or herself. Northwestern University’s annual undergraduate tuition, for example, is over $35,000. Include the cost of on-campus living and that number could easily double. True, there are families that can fork over that much money without batting an eye. However, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median family income for a family of four in Illinois is $72,368 per year. It doesn’t take a calculator to figure out how many Illinois residents are in debt because of their bachelor’s degree.
With NEIU’s tuition rates ranging from six to fourteen grand per year, depending on residency status and date of enrollment, it looks pretty rosy in comparison to some of the other local schools. In turn, regardless of the economic situation, NEIU alumni will have the relative luxury of being able to enter the workforce (or lack thereof) with little or no student loan debt.
So, when your friends at those big, fancy universities are complaining about the mound of debt they’ve incurred for a diploma, which is printed on the same kind of paper as yours no less, feel free to pat yourself on the back for an educational decision well made.