Social Work at Ohio University-Zanesville Campus

Ohio University-Zanesville's social work program delivers something increasingly rare: graduates carry less debt than the national average while earning slightly above it. At $23,570, students here borrow about $3,000 less than typical social work majors nationwide, while their first-year earnings of $37,990 actually match the state median for this field.

The 60th percentile ranking among Ohio social work programs is solid, though it's worth noting that top programs in the state like Capital University and Bowling Green push closer to $40,000-$44,000 in starting pay. That gap is real, but so is the debt advantage—many of those higher-earning programs saddle students with significantly more loans. The 0.62 debt-to-earnings ratio here is manageable, meaning graduates owe less than eight months of their first-year salary. Earnings also show healthy growth to $43,103 by year four, a 14% increase that outpaces inflation.

For parents worried about their child's financial stability in a helping profession, this program thread the needle reasonably well. Social work will never be a high-earning field, but this campus keeps debt low enough that graduates can actually afford to work in the profession they trained for without crushing loan payments forcing them into other careers.