Average debt: $28,840
Students with debt upon graduation: 62 percent
In Michigan, three-quarters of graduating seniors at Lawrence Technological University finished school with student loans, at an average debt of $41,529 per student. That average was nearly $4,600 more than the reported debt load for students at Ferris State University.
Seventy-one percent of the class of 2012 graduated with student loan debt, up from 68 percent in 2008, according to a recent study from the Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS)
The average debt load per student also varied widely depending on what kind of school students attended – about $39,950 for students at for-profit schools and $25,500 for graduates of public institutions. Non-profit college debt was roughly in the middle, at an average of $32,300 per student.
The US is also divided geographically when it comes to student debt – the states with the lowest student debt, such as New Mexico and California, are generally in the west. By contrast, five East Coast states – New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, Delaware and New Jersey – were home to some of the country’s highest rates of student debt.
TICAS based its reporting on data licensed from the Peterson’s educational publishing company, which in turn was sourced from information voluntarily released by the schools. (The study didn’t include data from North Dakota because there wasn’t enough to work with.) The average debt figures on the list represent the average debt among loan-carrying students.
Federal surveys collect data on student debt every four years, and noted that colleges and universities aren’t required to report student debt figures, according to TICAS.
