Ground Transportation at Southwest Technical College

A certificate in ground transportation typically costs around $9,280 in debt nationwide—roughly what you'd expect here at Southwest Technical College—and leads to first-year earnings near $41,400 based on national outcomes for similar programs. That debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.22 suggests manageable repayment: borrowers would owe about 22 cents for every dollar earned in year one, well below the concerning thresholds that make loans difficult to service.

The challenge is that we're working entirely from national estimates here. With just 14% of students receiving Pell grants, Southwest appears to serve a relatively advantaged population, which could mean better-than-average outcomes if family resources provide additional support during training and job placement. However, the transportation industry in rural Utah may offer different salary trajectories than the national average, and without school-specific data, there's no way to verify whether graduates actually land the commercial driving or logistics jobs these programs typically target.

If your child has a clear path to a transportation career—perhaps a CDL-A license or dispatcher certification with hiring commitments from local companies—the modest debt looks defensible. But given the complete absence of verified outcomes, you'd want concrete assurances about job placement rates and starting positions before committing. The numbers suggest reasonable value, but you're essentially trusting that Southwest's program performs at least as well as the national median.