What college majors are fee-based? Is the doctoral school a goose that lays golden eggs or a money pit? Are Ivy League degrees usually worthwhile?
The Wall Street Journal answers these questions – and more – inside a one-of-a-kind help guide to student debt. Readers can download the free WSJ Help guide to Student Loans: Navigating Myths and Misunderstandings About College Debt by following this link.
With chapters on a selection of undergraduate and graduate programs, and for borrowing parents and those that have taken out loans before, the guide provides valuable information about how to measure the possibility gain of various degrees before borrowing and how to manage debt that is already unpaid.
As college costs have skyrocketed and better education has turned into a must for many careers, borrowing has become a standard method to pay for education. More than 43 million borrowers collectively owe about $1.6 trillion in federal student loans. A pause in payments as well as an interest freeze during the coronavirus pandemic provided relief to borrowers, but those moratoriums are set to expire later this season.
Some Democratic politicians have made further student loan forgiveness important policy issue, although sweeping forgiveness measures seem dead for now. Any effort to alleviate the burden on borrowers is likely to push the government loan program deeper in to the red, an underlying cause for concern for many taxpayers.
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Colleges, on the other hand, benefit financially from easy education loan money. A number of Journal articles in 2022 explored how wealthy private colleges are leaving graduated pupils and fogeys entitled to unlimited federal loans with heavy debt. The series further explored how prestigious private schools leverage their brands to charge top dollar for graduate degrees that provide paltry earnings prospects.
Expanding on these reports, the Journal's new guide requires a broader take a look at how colleges offer financial aid to students and parents, and which degrees provide the best and worst financial outcomes. Among the discoveries:
- Many wealthy schools offer generous undergraduate financial aid, although not all of them. At some colleges with large endowments, students from low-income families owed as much after scholarships, on average, as students from more affluent backgrounds.
- Fields that typically required a master's degree had a lower median annual salary in 2022 ($76,800) compared to those that typically required a bachelor's degree ($78,020), based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- In certain cases, graduate programs at public universities have led to higher salaries than programs at prestigious private schools in the same city. Yet private college students ended up with much more debt.
This guide includes answers to common questions regarding student debt and step-by-step instructions where families will find additional information about income prospects for specific programs and other financial aid resources – sometimes difficult documents. to find. The Journal analyzed publicly available federal education loan data to compile a large number of graphs that show which programs leave students with high debt relative to their salary, which offer borrowers good value for money, plus much more. .
In addition, the guide contains brief case studies of borrowers, advice from educational funding experts, checklists that will help you navigate the borrowing process, along with a glossary of commonly used terms. The guide's digital format allows readers to simply click from section to section. The guide was reported and compiled by Andrea Fuller, Melissa Korn, Rebecca Ballhaus, Tawnell D. Hobbs and Rebecca Smith, with data analysis by Ms. Fuller.
Getting into debt may be one of the most important financial decisions borrowers can make within their lifetime. With The WSJ Guide to Student Loans, readers could make more informed decisions before you take on debt that can linger for many years.
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