Source:
NY TimesStudents who graduated from college in 2010 with student loans owed an average of $25,250, up 5 percent from the previous year, according to a report scheduled for release Thursday.
The average debt — once again the highest on record — came as the class of 2010 faced an unemployment rate for new college graduates of 9.1 percent, the highest in recent years, according to the report by the Project on Student Debt, which pointed out that unemployment rates for those without college degrees were still higher.
Matthew Reed, the report’s author, said that some people had expected the jump “to be even higher because of the economic downturn,” but that larger grants had helped “at least partially offset lower family incomes and higher tuitions while the class of 2010 was in school.” About two-thirds of the class of 2010 graduated with student debt. (The debts examined in the report do not include loans taken out by parents.)
The report is based on data from more than 1,000 colleges, representing half of all public and private nonprofit four-year schools. The average amount of debt would be even higher if the report included profit-making schools, where almost all students take out loans and, according to federal data, borrow about 45 percent more than students at nonprofits. But only five of 471 profit-making colleges reported student debt data for their 2010 graduates, the report said.
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/education/average-student-loan-debt-grew-by-5-percent-in-2010.html