(Radio Iowa) – Iowa State president Wendy Wintersteen is retiring at the end of the year after working there since 1979, and becoming the school’s first woman president in 2017. Wintersteen says she doesn’t agree with the idea that the cost of a college education now isn’t worth it to students. “We see over and over again just the return on investment for our students in terms of the placement rates and the salaries that they are able to earn once they graduate,” she says. Wintersteen says she worries that students who could help fill jobs where there are shortages aren’t coming to college. “I think it’s important to think about that in terms of the future of the country. We have a lot of really smart kids in Iowa that should come get a degree in biomedical engineering, get a degree in electrical engineering and physics, chemistry, get a degree in material science engineering, precision agriculture, animal science,” Wintersteen says.

Wintersteen say 75 percent of I-S-U students get a get a scholarship from a private donor and they are working to increase that. “Forty-four percent of our students graduate without any debt. And so that’s a great number to remember and the average debt at Iowa State is around 28-thousand, 29-thousand dollars, and we have a very low default rate,” Wintersteen says. She says graduates get good jobs and are able to pay off the loans and it raises a question. “Well, how else could you spend that money? So investing in your future. it’s a pretty good way to do that,” she says.

Wintersteen says they require all students at Iowa State to take educational program on what it means to take out a loan and they have to sign a piece of paper that they’ve done that educational training, understanding they have to pay the loan back. Wintersteen retires January 2nd.