Heating, Air Conditioning, Ventilation and Refrigeration Maintenance Technology/Technician (HAC, HACR, HVAC, HVACR) at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College

With estimated debt of $12,000 against first-year earnings around $41,400, this HVAC program suggests a manageable financial start—a debt load that represents just three months of income based on what similar associate's degree programs produce nationally. The 0.29 debt-to-earnings ratio falls well below typical warning thresholds, and the debt figure sits notably under the national median of $17,500 for comparable programs.

The challenge is that these figures come from peer programs nationwide, not Elizabethtown's actual graduates, since too few students completed this program for the Department of Education to report outcomes. This means you're investing based on what HVAC associate's programs typically deliver elsewhere, with no direct evidence of how this specific school's training translates to Kentucky employment. Kentucky has seven schools offering HVAC programs, but none report public data either—suggesting these are small, specialized programs across the state where outcomes vary significantly by local employer relationships and individual student effort.

For a field like HVAC where hands-on training quality and regional employer connections matter enormously, the lack of program-specific data is a real information gap. If Elizabethtown has strong partnerships with local contractors or utilities, outcomes could exceed these estimates. Without that visibility, you're betting on the fundamentals: steady demand for HVAC technicians and relatively modest debt. Talk directly with the program about job placement rates and where recent graduates actually landed work.