Practical information: Stories for those with student loan debt

Like other health care professional school graduates, many occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs) have student loan debt. These loan amounts can be significant: Nearly 60% of occupational therapy students graduate with $80,000 or more in loans, and 25% graduate with loan amounts between $140,000 and $250,000 (American Occupational Therapy Association [AOTA], 2024). General advice from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (n.d.) is that borrowers should not take more in student loans than their expected future annual salary. In a Forbes article, Maldonado (2020) advised borrowers that their future annual salary should be 1.5 times higher than their loan amount. For example, if a borrower anticipates a salary of $80,000 then the loan amount should not be greater than $53,333 (Maldonado, 2020).