Borrowers’ Average Debt at Graduation Climbs to $29,400 – Students – The Chronicle of Higher Education

• Borrowers’ Average Debt at Graduation Climbs to $29,400 – Students – The Chronicle of Higher Education

  This is a national disaster in the making. Students and parents in student loan debt with degrees of dubious value in a hypercompetive employment market. I side with the students and parents who by a recent poll 42% hold the colleges and universities responsible for the rise of student loan debt. Colleges and universities should defer or pay student loans until their customers (students and parents) Any graduating student with loan debt who does 5 or more years in verified community or non profit service cancel their student loan debt. Full 100% transparency from all colleges that receive federal or student financial assistance.

• • Seventy-one percent of students who graduated from four-year colleges in 2012 had student loans, an average of $29,400, according to a report released on Wednesday offering the most accurate assessment of borrowing nationally in years.

  • The national average-debt figure, which has risen in recent years, belies considerable variation, said Lauren Asher, president of the institute, known as Ticas.

  • At individual colleges that provided data, average debt per borrower was as low as $4,450 and as high as $49,450. The share of borrowers in each campus’s Class of 2012 ranged from 6 percent to 100 percent.

  • "reinforces the need for consumer information and tools"—and for better data.

  • At public colleges, two-thirds of graduates had borrowed, and their average debt was $25,500. At private nonprofits, three-quarters of graduates had borrowed, $32,300 on average. And at for-profits, 88 percent of graduates had borrowed, with an average debt of $39,950.

  • Over all, both the share of graduates with debt and the average amount they borrowed have grown in recent years.

  • Over four years, then, that average burden went up by more than 25 percent.

  • As college prices rise and families shoulder a greater share, borrowing has become more common, Ms. Asher said. At public colleges, tuition increases in the face of state budget cuts have helped fuel that trend.

  • A recent poll of young Americans by Harvard University‘s Institute of Politics found that 42 percent said colleges were "most responsible for the rising amount of student debt in the U.S.

  • ederal government’s National Postsecondary Student Aid Study provides the best available national student-debt data, but it releases results only every four years or so

  • This year’s report is based on the new federal study, which also updated the national figures for 2008.

  • because so few for-profit colleges release their borrowing data, the nonprofit group’s off-year estimates include only public and private nonprofit institutions.

  • students at for-profit colleges are more likely to borrow and have higher average debt.

  • Data on private loans are limited, including only those the colleges are aware of. And debt totals reflect only loans taken out by students themselves, excluding what their parents may have borrowed.

  • "For consumers and policy makers," she said, "it’s crucial to have information on debt at graduation for every school."

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