The Risks of Student Loans: What to Know Before Going into Debt

Student loans have an obvious benefit: if money is short, student loans allow you to go to school and get the degree you need to advance your career. But risks also come with taking a student loan, some obvious, some less obvious.

The most obvious risk is that you won't finish the degree program for which you are taking the loan, and you then end up leaving the school without anything to show for except some uncomfortably large debts.

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Another risk, equally obvious, is that you take the loan, finish the degree program, but then have a degree that's not marketable, that doesn't get you the job you want and doesn't increase your pay enough to offset the debt you are now having to pay off.

The way to minimize both these risks is to do your homework before enrolling in a degree program, making sure that students attending the program have a good rate of success in actually finishing it, and additionally making sure that students who finish it have good job prospects upon completion.

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Schools vary enormously in the tuitions they charge (compare our cost index, which shows that colleges and universities can charge anywhere from $1,400 to $51,000 for tuition and fees for full-time students for the year