what graduate degree gets out of debt the fastest

[Quan]

Interesting article.  Not sure if lumping all medical professionals together is valid.  The chart at the end that compares debt-to-income ratio to school reputation is interesting.

 

https://priceonomics.com/which-graduate-degree-gets-you-out-of-debt-the/

 

 

[ENT Doc]

I don't trust these statistics.  That medical resident debt/income would drop so much in their stable, low-earning residency years seems a bit ludicrous.  The average MD salary is also likely understated at $135k.  I agree with the basic premise that we can pay off our loans with the biggest trajectory downwards, but to put an MD on the same playing field as the others at 11 years is a false comparison of "mid-career".  First, 11 years isn't mid-career.  Second, MDs are the only degree holders of all of them that absolutely require additional training of at least 3 years (on average more).  Thus, their career earnings don't really start 3-7 years post graduation, which means lumping all MDs together is inaccurate, and it doesn't allow for proper comparison with the other degrees.

[Craigy]

A lot of these numbers seem very high or very low.  And several of these seem a little counter-intuitive.

I think a lot of it has to do with the data source -- Earnest clients, i.e., a certain subset of the populace that is smart enough to refinance their student loans and then further subset by those who met Earnest's criteria for loan approval, i.e. those with decent jobs and within that, those with good debt-to-income ratios.

Off the bat, the numbers for law, arts and MBAs seem very high.  Seems like everybody has some sort of MBA and only a few make any money with one.  The economy has improved, but there are tons of law grads who are still waiting tables. Save perhaps at a handful of schools, JDs going on to big six-figure jobs are few and far between.  Anybody I know who has a master of arts is either an english teacher, jazz flute player or a housewife with a real estate license who assists on one or two sales a year.  The articles I've read by WSJ et al all show lower figures than these.

Also while Earnest does let you update your income on their website, they only poll your income at the time you apply for the loan.  Compounding the matter is lumping together "medical professionals" which is a very wide range including not only low-income residents but non-doctors.  Same with "Master of Science or Engineering" -- one is an engineer, one is a high school physics teacher.

It's a neat article but I wonder how good the data is.