While we would love to chime in with the classic complaint of how expensive school is, we would rather use this small space to point out how highly inaccurate a story that was published about ACU is and to echo your mother’s words, don’t believe everything you hear (or read on the Internet).
Last week, a list circulated the Internet titled “20 Private Colleges With the Highest Student Loan Debt,” and Abilene Christian University was ranked number 11, with an average debt of $42,967.
There are several reasons their calculations are off, the biggest one being that they are pulling numbers from a report that schools are not required to file with all their other federal documents, and so very few schools do. ACU is one of the few who does, and so here they are being compared to a very small number of other very random private schools.
Dr. Allison Garrett, executive vice president of the university, also pointed out that the number given in the article is for those who have debt, so it’s not an average of ACU students graduating.
“In fact, the percentage of ACU students who graduate with any debt is quite a bit lower than the national average,” she said. “The national average for a private university is 75 percent of students who take on debt. Ours is 66 percent.”
It’s dangerous, at a time when student loans and the affordability of education is a national issue and constantly in headlines, for stories like this one to be propelled across the Internet by outlets like Money Magazine (TIME) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
For six years, U.S. News has ranked ACU as one of the top 15 best value schools. ACU has actively taken steps such as creating block tuition or initiating a $50 million campaign for student scholarships. Many students will graduate with debt, but it’s doubtful that it’s the 11th worst amount of debt in the nation.
