How to Avoid a Large Student Debt

Hi, my name is Destra Capers. I'm the director of Outreach at South Carolina Student Loan. I wanna talk to you about how to avoid large amounts of student loan debt.

I think the biggest causes of student loan debt is not paying attention to the return on investment. Do you really need to go out of state to become an educator? Do you really need to go to a four year school versus going to a two year school?

I want you to consider your career and the pipeline or the pathway for that, and really think about what type of education you need to access that career. If it doesn't require a four year degree, if it doesn't require you to go out of state for that specialized program, I would encourage you to look at all of your options as a high school student.

I would encourage you to do a couple of things. If you're trying to decrease your student loan debt as you are pursuing your higher education, one: grades, you guys, I know you hear it from your educators, you hear it from your school counselors and you hear it from your parents, but those grades equate to money.

So if you can actually graduate with a decent GPA, that can actually lead to money. So that's one thing. Another thing that I want you to consider is career exploration.

College is a great time to explore who you are as a person and figure out how you wanna present in the world, but it's not the best place for you to do your career exploration.

High school is a great time for you to do career exploration, so here are some things to consider. You can take classes through your career and technical education center.

You can volunteer, you can do reverse interviews of people who have careers that you're interested in, and you're trying to figure out what exactly to do to access that same education.