When students graduated from college in 2014, those who borrowed money to pay for college owed an average of $28,950. Now the average debt is $30,100 — 4 percent higher — for those who graduated in 2015, according to a new report released Tuesday.
“Student debt is still rising, and the typical college graduate now leaves school with over $30,000 in loans,” said Lauren Asher, president of The Institute for College Access & Success, or TICAS, which released its 11th annual student loan debt report Tuesday.
“We need to make college more affordable and debt less burdensome for students and families,” Asher said.
TICAS tackles the tough subject of student loan debt through a new report titled “Student Debt and the Class of 2015.”
It seeks to describe the financial plight of the roughly 7 in 10 college seniors who graduate from public or private nonprofit colleges. The report says the average debt level ranged from $3,000 to $53,000.
The report also breaks down the average debt per student by state.
High-debt states tended to be concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest, while those with the lowest debts tended to be located in the West, the report found. For instance, the highest average student debt is in New Hampshire — at $36,101 — while the lowest is in Utah — at $18,873.
