Is Anyone Else Graduate From DePaul With Crushing Debt
I’m about to graduate from DePaul and finally realized the total borrowing tied to my degree is around 200k between federal and Parent PLUS loans. Looking back at my financial aid history genuinely made me angry.
Private schools like DePaul market themselves like the opportunities justify the cost. But my Presidential Scholarship stayed flat while my yearly cost of attendance climbed from $58K to over $73K in four years. Every annual increase just got quietly pushed into more loans with no real conversation about what that meant long term.
At what point does this become predatory? How is an 18 year old supposed to understand the long term reality of signing onto this kind of debt? Especially when the school clearly knows most families can’t cash flow these prices.
I want to ask graduates who also are forced to pay these on their own how they succeeded? If you’re willing to say how much loan did you start with? And how much did you manage to erase. How long did it realistically take before life felt financially normal again?