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Originally Posted by Cyrano
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That's abnormal and mostly for people who can't get into state schools who go straight to opening or investing in a practice immediately upon receiving their letters. In state tuition for Texas DDS programs is 13-16k per year + cost of living and some extra for tools, specs, etc. Overall if you're in state the cost of attending a DDS program is comparable to a state university. For reference, tuition at UT this past year eclipsed $6200 per semester for 15 hours.
Even if you went out of state or simply to a private school at around $55k per year you're looking at $200k tuition + living and tools. Even is we use very liberal budgeting figures and say they total another $125k during that time we're roughly $100k or 33% off from your figure. I'm not saying this never happens, but for someone to have almost half a million in debt upon leaving dental school seems ludicrous.
I recently heard that the average associate with PDS makes ~$170k annually straight out of school with ZERO overhead cost. You can put some serious payback into those loans over a two year span and still have enough to buy into a practice as a partner.
Also, I'm not sure where you heard 16-17% loan rate but that sounds as if they transferred their loan sum to consolidate under a private institution of some sort. Professional school tuition loans often run sub 5% which is why you see doctors, dentists, and lawyers pay them off over 20 year plans quite often.
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I'm just speaking on an individual basis as opposed to a normative mean, while anyone can throw D.O.E statistics and base every individual case into this lump sum, it's better to interview the average college graduate in the professional world in terms of debt and weight of a degree.