A report released earlier this month by the State Public Interest Research Group suggests that college graduates with substantial student loan debt cannot afford to accept jobs with low starting salaries, such as teaching and social work.

As a result, unmanageable student loan debt may deter graduates from pursuing public service careers, the report claims.

According to the report, the economists who contributed to the study based their findings on a “graduated benchmark system for estimating burdensome student debt.”

The report revealed that graduates pursuing public service careers can only manage to spend a certain amount of their annual income on student loan payments.

An estimated 23 percent of graduates with starting teacher salaries and 37 percent with starting social worker salaries have unmanageable debt. The report did not specify whether the studied group included graduates without debt.

According to Julie Rice Mallette, the director of Scholarships and Financial Aid, students graduating from N.C. State in the 2004-2005 academic year had a total debt averaging $14,505. The College Board estimated the national average debt of students that graduated in 2004 from public four-year institutions to be $15,500.

More than half of the students who graduated from NCSU in 2005 borrowed federal loans while enrolled as undergraduates, Mallette said.

“This means at any time during their years enrolled at N.C. State,” she said.

Representative George Miller, senior democrat on the Education & Workforce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, indicated that the State PIRG report shows another reason for the need to make college more affordable. “Too often, debt limits graduates’ ability to pursue public service careers,” Miller stated in a press release regarding the report. “Many critical occupations, like teaching, already suffer from shortages of highly qualified workers because of their lower starting salaries.”

According Cecilia Raglan Perry, a senior in middle school social studies education and a College of Education Ambassador, the need to fill teaching positions is an ongoing struggle.

She said she thinks that there are other factors at work contributing to a shortage of qualified candidates to fill public service positions, but blamed low pay as the top reason.

She also said that people may not pursue these positions because of a lack of prestige and respect for the job and the overall challenge of the job.

“A lot of people also look at these jobs as less prestigious — you work long hours, are underpaid and are not appreciated,” Perry said.

She said she plans to substitute teach after graduation and is considering attending law school to become a public defender.

“All of my career aspirations are in public service,” she said.

Sara Idol, a teacher and recent graduate in math and math education, said that many people with different degrees, such as engineering, do not find jobs in their field and often end up in the teaching profession.

“Most people go into teaching because there is nothing else out there,” she said. There are programs available to assist students in eliminating debt if they commit to teaching, Idol added, such as the Teaching Fellows program which pays up to $6,500 towards college costs to qualified students.

However, the highly competitive program is offered to a limited number of students and candidates have to commit to the teaching profession before entering college, she said.

She also indicated that she missed out on the opportunity due to the early requirements.

Perry mentioned another program available to students graduating with debt, called Teach for America, a non-profit organization that “forgives” student loan debt if a graduate commits to teaching for two years in rural and urban school districts that have the greatest need for teachers. However, Perry said that Teach for America is very selective, and noted a student who said she was turned down from the program because she did not have enough debt to qualify.

According to the Teach for America Web site, the program accepts graduates from all academic majors — not just those pursuing education degrees.

In North Carolina a beginning teacher earned an average of $27,572 during the 2003-2004 school year, which was lower than the national average of $31,704, according to a survey released by the American Federation of Teachers.

Although the survey revealed that beginning teacher salaries will grow 1.1 percent every year, the AFT stated in a report that the salary increase did not keep up with inflation.

Idol also added that she always hears complaints about the teaching profession, but personally, she is content.

“I get weekends off, and I don’t have to work during any holidays — I have excellent benefits,” she said. “Money has never been a motivation for me — I don’t think it can be in a public service position.”