STUDENT LOANS AND DEBT-TO-SALARY RATIOS: Out Of School And Into The Red. “Instead of looking at tuition and salaries, I have examined the debt-to-salary ratio. Student debt captures more about the true costs of college than does tuition alone; due to generous scholarships and grants, many universities’ sticker price is vastly different from what students actually end up paying. . . . Schools with a ratio of .57 or higher (marked in red) are at the other end of the spectrum. According to Mapping Your Future, student debt that represents more than 57 percent of one year’s salary will yield loan payments that are unaffordable. Nineteen North Carolina Schools exceed that ratio. Two schools, Johnson C. Smith and Meredith College, have ratios greater than one-to-one.” Can you say higher education bubble? These are mostly fairly obscure private schools with high tuitions but no offsetting national reputation. Such schools will be the first casualties when students are no longer willing to bear punishing levels of post-graduation debt.