Oliver Schak, research director at TICAS and one of the report's authors
“If you compare this report to previous years, we consistently see debt is higher in Northeastern states and lower in Western states,” said Oliver Schak, research director at TICAS and one of the report’s authors. “We also continue to see debt is higher at private, nonprofit institutions and lower at public institutions.
This is the 16th annual report from TICAS on debt for bachelor’s degree graduates of public and nonprofit colleges. The report noted it did not include national figures for the share of the Class of 2020 with debt or their average debt. The U.S. Department of Education’s next set of data that will cover graduates from the Class of 2020 is not expected to be released this year.
Schak added that the report found disparities between states in not only how much average student debt graduates had but what kind of debt. For instance, out of the top ten states with the highest student debt average overall, eight of those states also ranked in the top ten among those with the highest private student loan debt average.
While the report does not take on the possible reasons for such differences, Schak highlighted the importance of investing in public institutions.
“It remains the case that typically debt loads are lower at public institutions, which tend to have much lower tuition and fees than private nonprofits,” said Schak. “But there’s been a long-term downward trend in investment in public institutions, so policy makers should really be looking to reverse that and start increasing investment at the federal and state levels.”
Dr. Liang Zhang, a professor of higher education at New York University, studies higher education economics, finance, and public policy. In response to the TICAS report, he pointed out that the numbers in the analysis are only out of those graduates who borrowed, though not all students do. He said that roughly 65% of students graduate with student loans.
