After four years of scooping out sundaes and mixing up milkshakes at Dairy Queen in South Portland, Darien Richardson managed to save $10,000 toward her college education. But even after her savings, help from her parents and a hefty financial aid package from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, the 2006 graduate of the college is still faced with paying off another $10,000 in student loans.

During college, Richardson, a sociology major from South Portland, discovered a passion for teaching. As an intern in a kindergarten class at Waynflete, a private school in Portland, she will earn less than $15,000 this year. Though she worries about her debt when it comes time to pay her bills – including a monthly payment of $100 to start chipping away at the loans – Richardson is grateful for the help she has received.

“I’m pretty lucky to have such a low debt,” she said.

Most of those who graduate from college this month will face much higher debts than Richardson. Those between the ages of 16 and 25 – a group that has been dubbed “Generation Next” – will face debts much higher than any generation that has come before them. That debt, and what it might mean for the future, is one of the characteristics that define the generation, which The Current has been exploring in an ongoing series of stories.

Two-thirds of students who take loans out to pay for four-year colleges owe an average of $19,000 when they graduate, according to “Generation Next,” a Maine Public Broadcasting program that aired this winter. The greatest source of this debt comes from a spike in college tuition. Student loan debt has increased by 60 percent in the past 10 years, according to the program.

Still, students like Richardson are choosing to attend private, four-year institutions rather than saving money by going to state schools or community colleges. According to a study done by the College Board, in the 2006-2007 school year, the average private, four-year college cost slightly more than $30,000, while a public, four-year institution cost just less than $13,000.

Cape Elizabeth Guidance Director Sharon Merrill said she has seen many students faced with the choice of attending a less prestigious college that offered more in financial aid or taking out loans and going to the school of their choice.

“It’s a personal decision,” Merrill said.

Brandi Albahary, of Scarborough, had to make that decision last spring. Albahary was offered more financial aid from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, than from Ithaca College in upstate New York. She chose Ithaca because she loved the atmosphere and was interested in the communications program.

“Ithaca was the better school,” she said. “I knew I would be happier.”

After recently finishing her freshman year, Albahary still feels as though she made the right decision, but at the end of each semester, she can’t help but think about the debt that she will graduate with.

“It eventually will be a lot of money,” said Albahary, who would like to work for a public relations or advertising firm in Boston or New York. Though she is confident her degree from Ithaca will help her get a good job, she said, she thinks the experiences she has and the friends she has already made are deserving of the debt.

“I do think it will be worth it, even if I don’t get the best job,” she said.

Leslie Linfield, executive director of the Institute for Financial Literacy in Portland, said students should think through their options more before choosing debt and prestige over state schools and financial security. She said students who get humanities degrees at liberal arts colleges often come out with a lot of debt and no tangible source of income. If students truly believe that the name of the college on their degree is going to be significant in getting the job they want, they should consider starting out at a less expensive school and transferring later.

“They need to make smarter decisions going into the process,” Linfield said.

She suggested parents start talking to their kids about college in their freshman year of high school, when the level of academic performance starts to determine whether they will receive merit-based scholarships.

Linfield said students need to think about the degree they are going to get and what kind of money it is going to translate into. Though she said there will always be some uncertainty among high school students planning their careers, the costliness of college has made it necessary to have a plan.

“Parents need to have those hard conversations with their children,” said Linfield. She also said parents need to be realistic with themselves about how much they can afford without sacrificing their retirement.

“We need to get over the taboo of talking about money,” Linfield said.

Richardson said she had those talks with her parents.

“They told me from the get-go,” she said, of talking about what she would be expected to pay.

This year, living with that debt has become a reality for Richardson, but despite the monthly struggle to pay the bills, she has yet to second guess her decision. Her experience at Waynflete has even reinforced the fact that she made the right choice.

“The name is huge,” Richardson said of her alma mater. “I can see the connections, almost on a daily basis.”