Temporarily reducing payments to pursue more education, opinion?

Currently owe $34,000 at 5.62% through SoFi. I am 24 and single and graduated December 2024. This is down a good amount from my original amount! I have been paying as much as I can. I threw my sign on bonus and first bonus in, each about 2,000. I have no other debt besides my student loans.

Currently I make a salary of 82,000 from my day engineering job. I also bartend two nights per week at a small bar, one being Saturday and take home ~400$ biweekly direct deposit from that job. I make a 500$ payment once per month from my salary bank account which is about 100$ over the minimum for my loan and then I put all the money from bartending in. So 650-800$ extra per month depending on my tips.

My employer recently informed me that I qualify for tuition assistance because I have been there long enough and that they would pay for me to get my masters at the local university. This is a 15 month program broken into 8 week semesters. The issue is that I would have to pay income tax on the education assistance above ~5200 of assistance received per year.

I am quite interested in having my masters for potential growth into different positions down the road, however, I would have to stop making the extra payments from my bartending job and allow that money to be saved so I can pay the tax bill when the time comes. Any older more experienced people have input on if it’s worth it to return to paying ~100 over the minimum for 15 months to get my masters without taking on more debt?

Thanks!