Rising student debt has become a national concern, but the picture is far from uniform, with students at some colleges borrowing ten times as much as their counterparts at other colleges, a recent report says.
The Institute for College Access and Success, a research group, reported not only enormous variation in student debt from school to school – from less than $5,000 per borrower at some colleges, to almost $50,000 at others – but also wide differences by region, with students in the East and Midwest borrowing far more than those in the West and South.
The report underscores the murkiness of college costs, with consumers often focusing on sticker prices that have little to do with how much aid they will receive, how much they will pay out of pocket and how much they may have to borrow.
The institute estimated that of the students who earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011-12 from public colleges and nonprofit private ones, 68 percent had student loans, and the average borrower had $27,850 in debt, up from the $26,600 it estimated a year earlier.
A recent report by the College Board, using different methodology, put those figures at 60 percent and $26,500. Both sets of estimates exclude for-profit colleges, whose students are more likely to borrow and also borrow more on average, because much less data is available for that sector.
The institute’s report does not give debt figures for specific colleges, but it names 40 of the nonprofit schools where students borrow most, and 20 where they borrow least.
Average debt for graduates who had taken loans ranged from $41,500 to $49,450 at the 20 private, high-debt colleges listed. They are concentrated in the Northeast, like Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and Utica College in New York.
At the 20 named high-debt public colleges, student loans averaged $33,650 to $41,650. Half of them are state schools of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The low-debt colleges are a geographically diverse mix of public and private, ranging from little-known places like Campbellsville University of Kentucky to Princeton University. Their average debt loads for graduates who borrowed ranged from $4,450 to $11,750.
