Does Debt Affect Career Choice?

Here’s the Canadian perspective based on new research: http://higheredstrategy.com/category/employment.

Seems that whether or not students had a debt burden after graduation did not directly alter their career choices –meaning they did not only look for employment with high earning potential as the principal criteria for accepting a job.  The Canadian research, by a Toronto firm called Higher Education Strategy Associates,  found that “… as they head out into the workforce there’s little evidence that a preoccupation with earnings is, at present at least, a major outcome of student indebtedness.”   It’s not clear whom they sampled to reach their conclusion.

For a more complex analysis of how debt does and does not impact student career decision-making, see this 2007 research:  http://www.nber.org/papers/w13117.pdf