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A Wise Choice?
One day, Moyer sat down with his mother, Janne O'Donnell, to talk about his goal of going to law school. Don't count on it, O'Donnell told him. She couldn't afford the cost and Moyer doubted he could get a loan, given how much he owed already. "He said he felt like a failure," O'Donnell recalls. "He didn't know how he had gotten into such a mess."A week later, the 22-year-old hanged himself in his bedroom, where his mother found him. O'Donnell is convinced the money pressures caused his suicide. "Sean tried to pay his debts off," she says. "And he couldn't take it."
Trisha Johnson underwent an eerily similar tragedy. Her daughter, Mitzi Pool, was a freshman at the University of Central Oklahoma in 1997 when, like Sean Moyer, she loaded up on credit cards. One evening that fall, Pool called her mother, sobbing. She was $2,500 in debt and had just been laid off from her part-time job. "I told her, 'This weekend, we'll go through everything and figure out what to do,' " says Johnson. That was their last conversation. Hours later, Pool hanged herself in her dorm room. There was no note, but her pile of bills and her checkbook were spread out on her bed. "Credit card debt of $2,500 may not sound like much, but to an 18-year-old, it was a mountain," says Johnson.
To be sure, suicides are exceedingly rare. But despair is common -- and it sometimes leads students to rethink whether college was worth it. In fact, there are quite a few jobs that don't require a college degree, yet pay fairly well. On average, though, college graduates can expect to earn 80 percent more than those with only a high school diploma. Also, all but two of the 50 highest paying jobs (the exceptions being air traffic controllers and nuclear power reactor operators) require a four-year college degree. So foregoing a college education is often not a wise choice.
Merit Mikhail, who graduated last June from the University of California, Riverside, is glad she borrowed to get through school. But she left Riverside owing $20,000 in student loans and another $7,000 in credit card debt. Now in law school, Merit hopes to become a public-interest attorney, yet she may have to postpone that goal -- which bothers her. To handle her debt, she'll probably need to start with a more lucrative legal job.
Like so many other students, Mikhail took out her loans on a kind of blind faith that she could deal with the consequences. "You say to yourself, 'I have to go into debt to make it work, and whatever it takes later, I'll manage.' " Later has now arrived, and Mikhail is finding out the true cost of her college degree.
No Degree? Apply Here:
Four years of college may be your best ticket to a high-paying career, but these solid jobs don't require an undergraduate degree:
| Profession |  |
Median Annual Earnings |
| Air traffic controller |
|
$87,930 |
| Nuclear power reactor operator | |
60,180 |
| Dental hygienist* |
|
54,700 |
| Elevator installer/repairer | |
51,630 |
| Real estate broker |
|
51,380 |
| Commercial pilot (non-airline) | |
47,410 |
| Electrical power line installer/repairer |
|
47,210 |
| Locomotive engineer | |
46,540 |
| Telecom equipment installer/repairer* |
|
46,390 |
| Funeral director* | |
42,010 |
| Aircraft mechanic* |
|
41,990 |
| Brick mason | |
41,590 |
| Police officer |
|
40,970 |
| Electrician | |
40,770 |
| Flight attendant |
|
40,600 |
| Court reporter* | |
40,410 |
| Real estate appraiser* |
|
38,950 |
| *Requires associate’s degree or vocational diploma. |
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