student loans and wages:
college degrees

associate's and bachelor's degrees

Ultimately,the question guiding this supplement is, for each group, does it appear that wages are sufficient to meeting the cost of living in Maryland and repay student loans? To consider this question, the median loan repayment amount and the median quarterly wage amount were derived for each loan category of students with an Associate's degree or a Bachelor's degree [1]. The quarterly loan payment amount [2] was added to the living wage and the sum compared to the median quarterly wage. See Chart A.

Overall 28% of students with an Associate's degree and 38% of students with a Bachelor's degree and full-quarter wages had student loans.

For Associate's degree students the quarterly student loan payments across the four loan groups ranged from a low of $150 per quarter (or $50 per month) to a high of $918 per quarter (or $306 per month).

For Bachelor's degree students he quarterly student loan payments across the four loan groups ranged from a low of $150 per quarter (or $50 per month) to a high of $1,272 per quarter (or $424 per month).

The living wage in Maryland is $7,841 per quarter for one adult with no dependent children [3]. The addition of a student loan to quarterly living expenses increases the cost of living from $7,841 to between $7,991 and $9,083 for students with either an Associate's or Bachelor's degree.

associate's Degree results

For Associate's degrees, the median quarterly wage varied across the four loan groups from a low of $6,787 per quarter to a high of $7,890 per quarter. This means that high school graduates with an Associate's degree, when fully engaged in the workforce, have earnings close to those needed to cover both the cost of living in Maryland and their student loan payments at lower loan levels.  However, at high loan levels, these students have a shortfall of earnings of around $1,000 per quarter. See Chart A and Table A.

Chart A. Median Quarterly Wages, Student Loan Payment and Living Wage for High School Graduates, 2013, with an Associate's Degree Five Years after High School Graduation
Chart A. Median Quarterly Wages, Student Loan Payment and Living Wage for High School Graduates, 2013, with an Associate's Degree Five Years after High School Graduation

Bachelor's degree results

For Bachelor's degrees, the median quarterly wage varied across the four loan groups from a low of $9,704 per quarter to a high of $10,492 per quarter. This means that high school graduates with a Bachelor's degree, when fully engaged in the workforce, have earnings sufficient to cover both the cost of living in Maryland and their student loan payments at all loan levels.  See Chart B and Table B.

Chart B. Median Quarterly Wages, Student Loan Payment and Living Wage for High School Graduates, 2013, with a Bachelor's Degree Five Years after High School Graduation
Table B. Median Quarterly Wages, Student Loan Payment and Living Wage for High School Graduates, 2013, with a Bachelor's Degree Five Years after High School Graduation

SUmmary

The results presented here may vary greatly for any one student within an educational attainment-loan amount category as all calculations are completed with loan and wage medians and estimated loan repayment amounts.  Results should be interpreted with caution; however, the data suggest that, students who graduate with loans and are fully engaged in the workforce have sufficient funds to cover loan payments. This may mean that students, who incur modest amounts of student loan debt to finance educational costs rather than extending time to degree may be better off financially (or at least not worse off) than students who extend time to degree and forego career-level earnings.

student loan payments and wages
by educational attainment

Select from an option below to view student loans and wages for high school graduates with a some college, the methodology used for this report or to return to the overview.

some college

methodology

overview

Data Limitations and Definitions:
[1] Associate’s Graduates are defined as High school graduates who earn a postsecondary Associate's degree by the end of the fall term 2017 and are not enrolled in college in the spring 2018 and/or fall 2018 terms.  Bachelor’s Graduates are defined as High school graduates who earn a postsecondary Bachelor’s degree by the end of the fall term 2017 and are not enrolled in college in the spring 2018 and/or fall 2018 terms. Some graduates in either category may have earned more than one degree.  Each graduate is counted only once at the highest degree level.
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[2] The median loan amount was input into the federal student loan calculator using the Direct Loan specifications for a 10 year repayment plan at 5%interest. Note, not all loans in this student are direct loans, payment terms and interest rates could vary widely. https://studentloans.gov/myDirectLoan/repaymentEstimator.action
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[3] The Living WageCalculator developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides data on the cost of living in various geographic areas across the United States.  The living wage calculator incorporates the cost of food,housing, health insurance,transportation, taxes, clothing and other personal items to derive the minimum annual income required for basic self-sufficiency. It is more comprehensive than traditional poverty measures, which do not incorporate these broader costs of living. More information on the MIT Living Wage Calculator is available on their website. The measure selected from the Living Wage Calculator was “required annual income before taxes” for one adult with no dependent children which was $31,365 annually or $7,841 per fiscal quarter in 2018.  This income was converted to a quarterly income to align to quarterly wage data and is referred to as the “living wage” in the remainder of this analysis. Glasmeier, Amy K. (2018).  Living Wage Calculator.  (http://livingwage.mit.edu/) Massachusetts Institute of Technology.