Student debt is on the minds of college students across Wisconsin, including those attending technical colleges, who are also seeing rising costs to attend school.
UW-Madison assistant professor Nicholas Hillman spoke with Wisconsin Public Radio hosts last week to outline the issues facing technical college students when it comes to the price of their degrees.
“The average loan, at least with the most recent data, is about $4,700, and that’s for one year of school,” Hillman explained. “The average tuition is about $4,300.”
Although that might seem sufficient to cover tuition, Hillman said the loans are also meant to cover non-tuition expenses like housing, food and separate school fees, the costs of which are also climbing.
And while the public perception is that students with the highest debt are the ones who tend to default on their loans, Hillman said it is actually those with lower debt who find themselves there.
“They’re struggling with relatively small loans because they don’t have that credential that helps them earn higher earnings in the labor market,” he said.
Technical colleges are often marketed as a more affordable option to earn a degree, but Hillman said students could be increasingly scared off by the sticker shock of loans.
“I get worried about some of the talk that we hear about giant debt loads burdening people and preventing people to be independent in the economy, because just the opposite story is also true,” Hillman said. “Loans can help people invest in themselves.”
