Heating, Air Conditioning, Ventilation and Refrigeration Maintenance Technology/Technician (HAC, HACR, HVAC, HVACR) at Southwestern Illinois College

Based on comparable HVAC programs nationwide, this associate degree appears to deliver reasonable value—graduates typically start around $41,400 with roughly $12,000 in debt, producing a manageable debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.29. That's meaningfully below the national median debt of $17,500 for similar programs, which matters in a field where earnings start solid but don't necessarily climb dramatically (note that this program's four-year earnings of $40,100 actually trail the first-year estimate).

The challenge with Southwestern Illinois College specifically is that we're working entirely with estimated figures derived from peer programs nationally. Neither the earnings nor the debt data comes from actual graduates of this particular program—the sample size was too small for the Department of Education to publish. This means you're evaluating the investment based on what similar HVAC programs typically produce, not what SWI College has actually delivered.

For a trades program where skills transfer relatively consistently across schools and the real earnings power comes from licensure and field experience rather than institutional prestige, these estimates offer a reasonable baseline. The debt picture looks manageable assuming the $12,000 estimate holds, and HVAC offers steady employment demand. But before committing, get actual placement and completion data from the school itself—you need to know whether students finish the program and find work, metrics that exist even when earnings data doesn't.