Kevin Wanek was one semester away from graduation at Western State College in Gunnison, Colo., when he found himself in a bind. He no longer wanted to be an accountant, the field he was studying, but he owed more than $50,000 in student loans. Reluctant to take on more debt, he decided to drop out. “I started adding up what I owed,” he says, “and it really hit me.”
Though he had limited career options as a college dropout, he found an entry-level job at iTriage, a mobile-health-care-app maker in Denver, and over the past two years he’s become a computer programmer. Now he wants to finish his degree, this time with a focus on computer science. Yet with nearly all his disposable income going toward $600 monthly student loan payments, the 24-year-old worries he’ll never save enough to re-enroll. “It almost feels like the money is going into a black hole,” Wanek says. “It’s frustrating knowing that you’re paying for something you don’t have a tangible return on.”
