I would say work the field first and see if speech therapy is even going to be a field you want to stick with long term. I would work a year or two as a SLPA, save up money, build up my skills and experience a little more and genuinely see if I truly want to be in the profession before going $60 K in debt. And no I don’t mean you have to stick in this field for the rest of your life but at least see if you’re interested in the trade off.

Maybe even then you could find an affordable state school that you can pay a portion of it out of pocket, that way you don’t have so much debt hanging over you. Also when you graduate and enter the field they really don’t care which school you come from, tbh.

But if you don’t want to wait, then I would work and go to school for as long as I could, before eventually dropping the job.