Debt after college is a common problem for college graduates, but can easily be evaded by simply attending a cheaper school. While this may mean sacrificing the glamour of the Ivies and other top schools, there are plenty of affordable colleges out there that offer quality education. College is only four years of your life, and a degree can only take someone so far before it comes down to work ethic and maturity. By attending a more affordable school, graduates have more options when it comes time to graduate. While these schools are cheaper, that doesn’t mean that the level of education drastically changes when moving from one to the other.

While the glamour of the Ivies isn’t unfounded, children today grow up listening to their teachers and parents rave about those schools- romanticizing the idea of going to a top college over an affordable school. Attending a university simply for the name prestige is problematic. We glorify Ivy League graduates, but plenty of prominent people have succeeded without having to attend an Ivy League school. 15 of our 45 presidents didn’t attend Ivy Leagues, yet still were able to become successful. There are plenty of top schools out there that can provide a level of education equal in beneficiality to the Ivies.

The problem with us romanticizing a small selection of schools is the thought that an affordable and top tier school is suddenly downgraded when put next to an Ivy.

With the future in mind, it would be foolish to enroll in an expensive school knowing you would graduate facing a mountain of debt. Of course, those Ivy League schools are well funded and have high post graduation success rates, but what they don’t share are the statistics of thousands of students struggling to pay back their loans.

Leaving college with a framed degree and thousands in debt is daunting, but no matter what school students attend, they all leave the same. However, I’m sure that we could agree that someone with less debt would live a more comfortable life after college compared to someone with an Ivy League sticker overloaded with debt.