Student Loan Debt, With Little to Show for It

By Alison Damast
April 09, 2012

Kevin Wanek was one semester away from graduation at Western State College of Colorado in 2010 when he found himself in a bind. He no longer wanted to be an accountant, the field he had studied, but owed more than $50,000 in student loan payments to Wells Fargo (WFC) and other private lenders. Reluctant to take on further debt and close to reaching his borrowing limit, he decided to drop out. Says Wanek: “I started adding up what I owed, and it really hit me.”

Since he was a college dropout, his career options were limited, but he found an entry-level job at iTriage, a Denver-based mobile health-care application company. In the past two years, he has become a self-taught computer programmer and received a promotion. He now wants to go back to school and finish his degree online, this time with a focus on technology and computer science. But with nearly all his disposable income going toward his $600 monthly student loan payments, Wanek, 24, worries he’ll never be able to save enough money to complete his bachelor’s degree.

“It almost feels like the money is going into a black hole,” he says. “It is frustrating knowing that you’re paying for something which you don’t have a tangible return on.” the rest  image