Can This Theology Pupil Pray The Debt Away?

Michael Vazquez, a Grasp’s pupil in theology at Duke College, is the primary in his household to go to varsity. Like hundreds of thousands of scholars across the nation, he believed {that a} graduate diploma was the inspiration on which he may construct a greater future. Sadly, Michael is now amongst a whole lot of hundreds of scholars for whom the price of an schooling has develop into an excessive amount of to bear. RELATED: BET NEWS SPECIAL: Young, Gifted & Broke Based on Duke College’s website, the common price per semester for a Grasp’s diploma is about $30,000 — and that’s simply tuition. Whereas Michael has been working laborious to get scholarships to cowl a few of his bills, there’s nonetheless a large hole between the monetary help he can get and the truth of what it prices to finish a semester of graduate faculty. “Scholarships do not cowl the prices of meals or housing or transportation or textbooks which might run as much as a thousand {dollars} a semester at instances,” Michael tells BET.  Realizing that the common wage one may count on to earn with a theology diploma wouldn’t come near masking the loans he has needed to take out to earn the diploma, Michael already feels hopeless. “I bear in mind being informed in highschool. ‘So long as you get a bachelor’s diploma, you are set. You are good,’” he says. However, it seems, “We have been offered a lie. Proper?” His emotions of deception are correct. After commencement, these with theology levels typically develop into pastors, missionaries or chaplains. The vary for these positions is from $52okay to $73okay. Solely as soon as nicely right into a theological profession, a Masters of Theology Diploma can result in a tenured professorship, which at its highest pays $95okay. And naturally, being tenured isn’t any simple feat. Michael’s mounting debt and bills are taking a toll far past his dwindling financial institution stability. “I’ve seen my [grade point average] drop to 2.0 [from] as excessive as a 3.7,” he says. “And it is totally correlated, to not my capability to carry out, academically, however totally associated to the stress of not with the ability to know the place my subsequent meal is coming from.” Speaking about his mounting debt leaves Michael counting on the one factor that his schooling has taught him. He says, “I am hoping to repay my loans in prayer.” See extra of Michael’s story by watching the video under.  Angela Rye’s BET NEWS primetime particular, Young, Gifted & Broke: Our Student Loan Crisis, will air on BET on Sunday, September 15, 2019, at 8:00 p.m. ET. http://feeds.wager.com/~r/AllBetcom/~3/Hxum7wwzdZs/young-gifted-broke-michael-vazquez.html The post Can This Theology Pupil Pray The Debt Away? appeared first on Kartia Velino.