Does Debt Affect Career Choice?

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Global Career Compass

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