Is Vernon College Worth It?

Vernon College gives you a low-cost path with one clear payoff and a lot of dead ends. At $6,571 a year, your total cost stays modest, and median debt of $11,000 is low enough that most borrowers can clear it. But the 18.4% graduation rate is the number that should stop you. Most people who enroll here leave without a credential, and a certificate or degree is what makes the math work.

Nursing is the reason to come here. The associate nursing program pays more than $58,000 ten years out, roughly double what the general studies associate returns, and it carries debt you can pay off on a nurse's salary. Practical nursing and allied health certificates land in the high $30,000s and low $30,000s with light debt. These are the programs tied to real jobs in the rural Wichita Falls region, where hospitals and clinics hire steadily.

The general studies associate is the trap. At $28,055, it earns less than every health program and barely clears the school's overall median. It only works as a transfer step toward a four-year degree. Precision metal working sits in the middle at just under $30,000, useful if local manufacturing hiring holds.

On price, families earning under $48,000 pay in the $4,500 to $5,400 range, while households above $75,000 pay over $12,000. That inversion is unusual, so if you're in a higher income bracket, run your own aid estimate before assuming this is the cheap option.

Come here if you want to enter nursing or a health field, or use it as a low-cost transfer launch to a bachelor's. Look elsewhere if you need structure to finish, since fewer than one in five students here graduate.