Average debt up again for new college grads

Dave_Berry · 10-18-2012, 01:31 PM

"It's the latest snapshot of the growing burden of student debt and it's another discouraging one: Two-thirds of the national college class of 2011 finished school with loan debt, and those who borrowed walked off the graduation stage owing on average $26,600 — up about 5 percent from the class before." ...

Are you Class of 2012 Parents seeing this trend too?

The Associated Press: Average debt up again for new college grads

More: http://consumerist.com/2012/10/18/re...ent-graduates/

JenCook · 10-18-2012, 01:42 PM

Some students may be stretching out their college career until the economy recovers, especially if they haven't got a job lined up after graduation. The longer you can postpone graduation, the longer you can postpone student loan repayment, and too many of my friends are struggling with two or three part-time jobs just to pay rent, let alone loans.

SteveMA · 10-18-2012, 02:09 PM

Average cost of a new car $29,793

http://www.nada.org/NR/rdonlyres/079...A_08222011.pdf

ttparent · 10-18-2012, 02:16 PM

Is it government loan only? I don't see how schools would find out all the student private loans and the parents loans?

UCLA Band Mom · 10-18-2012, 03:14 PM

NBC news printed some interesting info on avg student loan debt
Student loan debt hits record high, study shows - Bottom Line

Quote:

The most indebted state is New Hampshire, with an average debt of $32,440, followed by Pennsylvania at $29,959, Minnesota at $29,793, Rhode Island at $29,097, and Connecticut at $28,783.

The state with the smallest average debt is Utah at $17,227, followed by Hawaii at $17,447, California at $18,879, Arizona at $19,950, and Nevada at $19,954.

SteveMA · 10-18-2012, 03:38 PM

The study says that loans include private and parent loans--information easily gathered by various reporting agencies.

Curious to know in each of the 3 expensive and the 3 least expensive states do a majority of students attend state schools (in state) vs private schools? If more students in say Hawaii attend state schools in Hawaii, costs may just be lower to start with (not to mention that the overall cost at the Flagship in Hawaii is a lot lower then NH, MN and RI).

J'adoube · 10-18-2012, 03:38 PM

Just for comparison. Debt after 2 years of college in 1972: $2000 (50% of what it cost to go to State Flagship). Cost of new car 1971: $2450 + tax (bare bones Chevrolet Vega with only automatic transmission and radio). Can't say what was the average at the time.

ahsmuoh · 10-18-2012, 03:52 PM

so according to j'adoube's stats the percentage is about the same if these students are OOS or private school ($26K is about 50% of a private school). Honestly I don't think that is an outrageous number. I hope that my kids can get out with less debt than that but I think that 26K is repayable in a 2-5 year time frame if a kid is willing to live frugally at first.

ttparent · 10-18-2012, 04:10 PM

"The study says that loans include private and parent loans--information easily gathered by various reporting agencies."

I took out heloc to help pay for my kids colleges, and I know anecdotally, many parents here on CC did the same. I guess they know how to account for that too?

gloworm · 10-19-2012, 06:32 AM

D got out in 2011 debt free. She has told us many times how grateful she is for that. She had lots of choices at acceptance time, four that would have left her debt free.

She is amazed at the loans some of her UG/Grad friends have.

barrons · 10-19-2012, 12:29 PM

But the MEDIAN debt is only about $13,000. The avg is driven way up by relatively few high debt people. And about one-third have no debt. So about 2/3 of students have debt under $13K. Not as big a problem as the media likes to imply. But most of them never took stats and would not know median from mean anyway.

http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/17/stu...ally-a-crisis/

lake42ks · 10-20-2012, 09:42 AM

What does "on average" mean? Are there some tables or charts to look at? Tell us who has lots of loans.

We know that lots of jobs lost in the past many years, but when we look at in details, we see lots of jobs gained for those with advanced degrees.

J'adoube · 10-20-2012, 05:43 PM

S1 has thanked us also for allowing him to graduate debt free (at great expense on our part, mind you). He did his part by earning about 20% of COA from merit scholarships. In my case I was able to pay off my loans in two years by living very frugally with my parents after college. I guess "living frugally" when necessary is a skill like riding a bicycle, that you don't forget.

ps. I had low interest (3%) student loans. At the time I started to pay them back there was what you could call "rampant inflation" and you were paying the loans off with "depreciated" dollars so it didn't seem so bad. I had no trouble finding a well paying job right off the bat. The job market situation is different today and living frugally might not be enough. What do you think?

cobrat · 10-21-2012, 05:13 PM

Quote:

The state with the smallest average debt is Utah at $17,227, followed by Hawaii at $17,447, California at $18,879, Arizona at $19,950, and Nevada at $19,954.

I'm actually surprised that Hawaii is among those with lowest average student debt considering the widespread perception among upper/upper-middle class neighbors of my Hawaii relatives that its state system is widely considered "schools of last resort" and "academically subpar" despite its flagship being strong in certain areas like Marine Biology and East Asian Studies.

Even going to a lower-tiered OOS in the continental 48 was viewed by many of them as preferable to having their kids attend their local public colleges. Granted, some of this attitude may also be derived from longstanding upper/middle class Hawaiian attitudes which factor in Hawaii being one of the states with the highest percentage of K-12 aged students attending private schools.

SteveMA · 10-21-2012, 06:16 PM

J'adoube brings up another point--back when I graduated student loans were at an unheard of low rate of 8%. I remember signing the papers laughing because mortgages were in the 15-18% at the time. By the time I got through school and we bought our first house, we were laughing again at the 7% interest rate on our first mortgage. We still managed to pay off our loans withing 4 years of graduating without any problems. Our debt was equal to the starting pay at our first jobs. The average debt today is less then the average starting pay for kids with a 4 year degree.