Tech’s ranked in the top 100 Best College Buys for the eighth consecutive year through Institutional Research and Evaluation, Inc.
According to 100bestcollegebuys.com, the organization specializes in identifying the top 100 American colleges by focusing on high quality education at a low cost.
Robert Hodum, tech enrollment management, said he thinks students choose Tech because it’s affordable, and they collect less debt while in college.
“We try to help students along the way to think about once you graduate, we want you to have the least debt,” Hodum said. “We understand that students look at the present time. If we can help them down the road by having a low student debt, that helps it become more affordable for the student.”
The Tennessee ranking bases the schools by the in-state and out-of-state costs for students and from prospective students’ GPA, SAT and ACT scores submitted to the college.
The four schools included with Tech are Belmont University, Union University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the University of Tennessee at Martin. Tech has the lowest in-state tuition in the TBR region and second lowest in-state and out-of-state cost in Tennessee. Tech’s in-state cost is $14,674 and out-of-state is $29,542.
Hodum said one way to keep debt down is by counseling students when they take out student loans.
“The financial aid office works with students to say to the student that they might qualify for $6,000 in loans but they really only need $3,000 to pay their bills, so we council students to keep their loan debt low,” Hodum said.
