Mary Levin
The University of Washington in Seattle.
By Allison Linn
Congratulations, class of 2010! In addition to that hard-earned college degree, most of you walked away with more student loan debt, on average,?than those who graduated before you.
A new report from The Project on Student Debt, a nonprofit working to make education more affordable, estimates that about two-thirds of people who graduated from traditional four-year colleges in 2010 had student loan debt.
For students who took on student loan debt, the group estimates that they graduated owing an average of $25,250. That?s up 5 percent from a year earlier.
The group noted that student loan debt varied widely depending on what state a person lives in. In New Hampshire, for example, average debt for the class of 2010 was $31,048. But in Utah, students had average debt of about half that, or $15,509.
An interactive, state-by-state map is available here.
The amount of debt a student takes on also can vary widely depending on where a person goes to school, and what kind of aid is available. For example, some of the pricey, elite private colleges offer very generous financial aid policies to needy and qualified students.
Hey middle class, tell us about yourselves
For the class of 2010, The Project on Student Debt said some students may have unexpectedly had to take on more debt because their parents were grappling with the effects of the recession and weak recovery. In addition, the recession caused some cash-strapped states to raise public university tuition rates substantially.
On the other hand, federal financial aid became more readily available as the economy weakened.
There?s plenty of evidence showing that a college education carries significant advantages, including a lower likelihood of unemployment and higher average earnings over time.
Still, those advantages may be tough to appreciate when you are fresh out of college and facing today?s difficult job market and looming debt payments. The unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds was 14.7 percent in September, much higher than the overall rate of 9.1 percent.
The Project on Student Debt data only looked at people who graduated from four-year public and private nonprofit colleges.
The group said they didn?t include information on private, for-profit colleges such as DeVry University and Capella University, because not many of those types of schools reported their data.. But they pointed to separate data from the Department of Education showing that, in 2008, 96 percent of people who graduated from a for-profit college had some student loan debt.
In addition, students who graduated from for-profit schools tended to have much more debt than those going to more traditional nonprofit schools, according to their analysis of the government data.
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Related:
Want to go to college? Check the home value
Parents rich? You may have to pitch in for college anyway
How we view college: Overpriced, unaffordable but worth it
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