Is Rowan College at Burlington County Worth It?

Rowan College at Burlington County keeps costs low and debt lower. At roughly $6,100 a year net and a median debt of $10,500 at graduation, you leave without the loan burden that sinks students at four-year schools. The financial risk here is not debt. It is finishing: fewer than four in ten students graduate, and a credential you never complete pays back nothing while your loan clock still runs.

The payoff depends almost entirely on your major. The nursing associate degree clears $62,000 a decade out, and allied health and dental support both land above $53,000. Those three health programs are the reason to enroll here, and they line up with steady demand for clinical staff across South Jersey and the Philadelphia metro. The gap below them is steep. Legal support services sits under $34,000, and criminal justice and corrections comes in around $27,000, below the school's overall median. If you pick criminal justice expecting the same return as nursing, the numbers say you won't get it.

Note that every program listed is an associate degree. Treat these as either a job-ready credential or a cheap start before transferring, not as a four-year outcome.

On price, families earning under $48,000 pay around $4,600 a year, the lowest tier and a genuine bargain for the health programs. Above $110,000, your net price nearly doubles to roughly $11,300, still cheap by college standards but no longer a giveaway.

This school fits you if you want a clinical health career or a low-cost transfer path and you will actually finish. Look elsewhere if you are drawn to the lower-earning programs and could get similar training somewhere with better completion odds.