More than half of students graduating from the best business schools in the country take out six-figure loans to pay for their college, a new Bloomberg Businessweek survey has revealed.
On average, students are borrowing $100,000 to fund their Masters in Business Administration degrees (MBAs). Bloomberg surveyed more than 10,000 MBA graduates from nearly 126 schools around the world.
The survey found that MBA graduates in the U.S. have higher debts levels than their counterparts in the rest of the world.
More than 40 percent of MBA students who graduated from top business schools in the U.S. including Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, the SC Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, reported owing more than $100,000 in student debt.
The median starting salary for the students graduating from the top schools hovered between $123,000 and $130,000.
Recent years have seen a sharp jump in tuition rates at colleges across the country as well. According to a Trends in Student Aid and Trends in College Pricing report, for full-time, out-of-state students at public four-year colleges and universities, tuition and fees rose from $25,670 in 2017-18 to $26,290 in 2018-19. For in-state students, these rates rose from $9,980 in 2017-18 to $10,230 in 2018-19.
A Training The Street (TTS) MBA Employment Survey found that student loan debt is often one of the deciding factors in a student’s career search. Furthermore, 42 percent of those who are starting out with salaries in excess of $125,000 still worry about paying off their loans.
Surveys have also shown that more than half of parents, especially men, are willing to incur an average debt of $31,000 to cover the cost of their child’s college education.
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