Education at Greenville University

A debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.70 sits right at the threshold most financial experts consider manageable—borrowing roughly seven months of first-year salary. Based on comparable education programs nationally, Greenville's graduates would face about $27,000 in debt while earning around $38,660 in their first year. That figure mirrors the national median for bachelor's-level education programs, suggesting this path leads to fairly typical starting teacher salaries. With 38% of students receiving Pell grants, many families here are counting on these programs to deliver solid middle-class jobs, and education traditionally does that.

The challenge is that these estimates come from peer programs nationwide, not Greenville's specific outcomes—the graduate pool here is too small for the Department of Education to publish actual data. Illinois has 17 schools offering education bachelor's degrees, but none with reported outcomes available for direct comparison. That leaves you working with broader national patterns rather than Illinois-specific realities or evidence of how Greenville's particular program performs.

For parents, this means weighing a predictable but modest career path against genuine uncertainty about this specific school's track record. Education degrees offer job stability and clear licensing pathways, which matters. But without concrete data on Greenville's graduates, you're betting on the program performing at least as well as the national average. If teaching is the goal and $27,000 in debt feels manageable, the fundamentals work—just recognize you're making that call without school-specific evidence.