Vehicle Maintenance and Repair Technologies at Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell Campus

Borrowing $9,500 to earn around $36,000 in your first year positions this certificate solidly in trade education territory—manageable debt for immediate employment. Based on comparable vehicle maintenance programs nationally, that debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.26 means graduates could potentially pay off their loans in about three months of gross earnings, assuming they're not financing a four-year degree but rather jumping directly into the workforce.

The challenge is that these figures come entirely from peer programs—Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell hasn't produced enough graduates in this program for the Department of Education to publish actual outcomes. What we do know is that the national landscape for this credential is crowded (941 programs compete for students), and the earnings ceiling appears relatively fixed: even top-performing programs nationally only push median earnings to about $40,000. For context, New Mexico has 18 schools offering similar training, though none have published graduate data either, suggesting most are small programs serving local markets.

The practical takeaway: if your child can complete this certificate for close to the estimated debt level and secure employment locally in Roswell's automotive sector, the numbers work. But press the school for job placement rates and relationships with local employers—those connections matter more here than the credential itself, especially when you're relying on estimates rather than proven graduate outcomes.