Accounting at Tidewater Community College

Tidewater Community College's accounting associate's program starts graduates at just $29,000—roughly $8,000 below both the Virginia and national medians for this degree. While earnings climb 26% by year four, that still only reaches $36,700, barely matching where most graduates begin at better-performing programs.

The silver lining here is debt. At $11,872, students borrow less than half what's typical in Virginia ($26,291) and significantly less than the national median. This puts Tidewater in the 87th percentile nationally for keeping debt low, which means the debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.41 is manageable even with below-average starting pay. For context, a graduate working full-time at these wages could realistically clear this debt within a few years.

The question is whether lower earnings are worth the savings on debt. If your child is considering accounting as a stepping stone to a four-year degree, this could work—community college credits transfer, and the debt burden won't handicap their bachelor's pursuit. But if they plan to stop at an associate's, programs like Liberty University's offer $11,000 more in starting salary for what might be a tolerable increase in debt. The math matters: that earnings gap compounds over a career, easily outweighing the upfront savings.