Student Debt and the Class of 2019 is TICAS’ fifteenth annual report on the student loan debt of recent graduates from four-year colleges. It documents changes and variation in student debt across states and colleges. The report covers only public and private nonprofit colleges as few for-profit colleges report what their students owe upon graduation.
Major findings include:
- Between 1996 and 2012, the average debt of borrowers increased steadily at an average rate of 4 percent per year.
- Much of this increase happened between 2004 and 2012 when average debt grew almost 58 percent from $18,600 to $29,400.
- On a per-student basis, state spending fell by 24 percent between 2008 and 2012. During this time, colleges raised tuition to make up for some of the revenue lost. This shift contributed to out-of-pocket college costs becoming increasingly burdensome for students.
- Between 2012 and 2016, these increases in debt slowed substantially with reported debt levels for public and nonprofit college graduates averaging $29,400 and $29,650, respectively.
- Compared to all other borrowers, average student debt levels among college graduates in the class of 2016 were higher for those who faced difficulty making federal loan payments ($38,050) than for borrowers without difficulty ($28,700).
- All major demographic groups in the class of 2019 had similar patterns of higher debt among struggling borrowers.
- Black borrowers experiencing payment difficulty had $42,520 in debt versus $33,750 for Black borrowers without difficulty.
- Latino borrowers with difficulty had $34,750 in debt versus $25,450 for Latino borrowers without difficulty.
- Nationally, graduates in the Class of 2019 are slightly less likely to leave college with student debt than their peers 15 years ago (62% of graduates compared to 65%).
