by Apurva Mahajan ’22

For the 2021-2022 school year, the average cost of tuition alone in the United States was $38,070 at private schools, and ranging from $10,740 to $27,560 at public schools. That doesn’t even factor into room and board and other expenses which add onto the increasingly expensive cost of going to a four-year university.

The average student loan debt for college graduates is $39,351, and the United States’ total student loan debt is 1.75 trillion. Currently, approximately 46 million Americans have student loan debt. As bachelor’s degrees cost more each year, many prospective college students are wondering whether getting a degree is worth all the debt in the long run.

According to a report from Georgetown University from the years 1980 to 2019, college costs have increased 169 percent while earnings for workers aged 22 to 27 have only increased 19 percent. Even with the rising cost of getting a bachelor’s degree, graduates still end up making more money than their counterparts without a degree. According to the Social Security Administration, men with bachelor’s degrees earn about $900,000 more, and women earn $630,000 more in median lifetime earnings compared to men and women without bachelor’s degrees.

Deciding whether a degree is worth the debt also depends on the program that the degree is for. According to a 2021 report by the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), 28 percent of college degree programs actually leave alumni “financially worse off than if they had never gone to college at all,” especially for education and arts majors, meaning that the return on investment (ROI) is not enough to recuperate the cost of their degree. According to FREOPP, a student’s decision of what they major in is “perhaps the most important financial decision he or she will ever make.”

After Covid-19, the job market is rebounding, making opportunities for college graduates better than before. According to a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, employers are looking to employ 31.6 percent more college graduates as compared to 2021.

Even with supply chain problems and concerns about inflation, employers are still working on hiring goals and are eager to employ new graduates, and there are plenty of opportunities for graduates to be financially secure and successful after graduation. Hopefully, those hiring trends will remain in place for Sherwood’s Class of 2022 when they graduate from college in four or five years.