Student Debt and Lack of Teachers Connected?

More and more college students are graduating with large debts hanging over them. An average amount of debt was $20,000 a year ago but now many students are left with a $40,000 that a teaching job just can’t pay for.

Most students go into teaching, experts say, for the love of the job and not the paycheck. However with college debts getting larger, a growing number of students are choosing job purely on how much they pay.

UNI Professor Jim Kelly says, “A lot of students are lured away from the teaching field by higher paying jobs. Part of it is, they’ve got so much debt built up into their background, they’ve got to get into the workforce right away.  They’ve found placements in industry, in insurance areas.”

Students are feeling the burden of their growing debt long before they graduate. Some of the kids have jobs to help cover the cost and some even have full-time, 40 hour a week employment in addition to school.