What's Next for the West Deptford Class of 2013?

After the caps are tossed in the air at tonight's commencement ceremonies (6:30 p.m. at West Deptford High School; at the RiverWinds in case of rain), after the parties are thrown, after the long summer, it will be time for the Class of 2013 to enter the world.

For those continuing their education, they are overwhelmingly heading to Gloucester County College. A whopping 94 members of the graduating class will be heading up the road, at least for the time being.

Some may choose to complete a two-year program; others will springboard from the county college system to a state school or elsewhere. Five additional graduates will join the county college system elsewhere in the state, and another 29 will head to New Jersey state colleges and universities like Rowan (10), Rutgers (eight) or the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey and Montclair State (three apiece).

Twenty-five graduates of the class of 2013 are headed to schools across the Delaware, with two getting into the University of Pennsylvania; a third Ivy Leaguer will attend Cornell.

Another five will head to Maryland, and eight more to places beyond, from New York to Massachusetts to the University of California at Irvine.

Twelve students will enter the workforce directly from high school, with three attending cosmetology school first. Another six will enlist in the U.S. armed forces, and six others are undecided.

But the top choice for many remains county college, and the most likely determining factor in that decision is cost.

A year of New Jersey community college is about $3,700, as compared with $24,000 per year to attend a state school like Rutgers.

In the past two years, Americans have owed more for student loans than they have in credit card debt for the first time in history, even as revolving credit card debt has decreased. The average college student graduates with $27,000 in debt, reported Forbes, up more than $10,000 in the past seven years.

N.J. Sen. Robert Singer (R, Lakewood), co-author of the Kean-Singer Student Loan Literacy Initiative, told Patch in February, "We’re no longer in the era where you can say 'I’m going to go to school for four years' and take the liberal arts and then decide what you want to do."

"You’ve got to at least start to think of a track of what has a job at the end of it.