Drafting/Design Engineering Technologies/Technicians at Mohawk Valley Community College

The $13,000 in debt estimated for this program—based on what similar community college programs typically see—lines up with a first-year salary around $45,000 from peer drafting programs nationwide. That debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.29 suggests graduates could reasonably manage their loans, assuming these national patterns hold locally. But here's the challenge: we don't know how Mohawk Valley's specific program performs because the graduate pool is too small for the Department of Education to publish actual outcomes.

What we do know is that drafting and design technology programs across the country produce fairly consistent results—the national median sits at that same $45,000 mark, with top-performing programs reaching just under $50,000. The field itself is stable, with demand for CAD technicians and drafters in manufacturing, architecture, and engineering firms. In upstate New York's manufacturing corridor, local job availability could work in graduates' favor, though the regional economy matters more for this occupation than for fields with broader geographic flexibility.

The bottom line: if your child is mechanically inclined and the program offers hands-on training with current software, the estimated debt level seems manageable. But you're essentially betting on national averages applying locally. Talk directly with the program about job placement rates and where recent graduates actually landed—those specifics matter more than any estimate when the sample size is this small.