While the nationwide student debt is in the trillions, the average borrower in the state owes $25,000.
For the past four years, LendEDU, a company that helps students plan and repay loans, has published a student loan debt report that offers statistics of student loans in the nation. The report gives the average amount of student debt per borrower for the nation as a whole, individual states and universities themselves. The 2019 report uses information from the 2018 graduating class and states that the nationwide student debt is currently at $1.52 trillion.
The report initially breaks down debt by ranking each of the 50 states and Washington D.C. The leading state for lowest amount of debt owed is Utah, with an average of $19,742 per borrower. The state with the highest debt is Connecticut with $38,776. Oklahoma is ranked at 12, with an average of $25,246 per borrower.
The report has two separate top 250 university rankings, one for the least amount of debt and one for the highest amount. Ranked #1 for the lowest amount is Appalachian Bible College in West Virginia with an average of $3,043 for the 2018 class. The highest was removed for a discrepancy in reporting, leaving Bryant University in Rhode Island at the highest spot with $54,067 on average. The nation wide reportings of debt have TU listed at rank #181 for the highest amount of debt owed, the highest in Oklahoma.
Within Oklahoma specifically, Rogers State University is ranked with the lowest amount of debt with the average borrower collecting $13,052. The University of Tulsa comes last in the list, with the average borrower from the 2018 class owing $35,985 and with 31 percent of students graduating with student debt. This amount is $5,000 more than the university before it and $10,000 more than the next private university.
Experian also came out with a report on student loan debt, tracking student loan throughout a person’s life. They found that, as the amount of student loan debt rises, the debt for all age groups rise in tandem. The report analyzed data from people aged 20 to 100 and uses Experian data from the second quarter 2019 to compare the average debt of each age range.
The Experian analysis found that consumers in their 30s have the highest average student debt, with those aged 35 having the highest overall with $42,564 owed. The age that owed the least was 20 year olds, owning an average of $11,576, but that number is expected to grow as they haven’t graduated yet. The report shows that student debt follows people all throughout their life, even into their 90s.
Student debt is a rising problem in America, and more attention is being drawn toward it through reports like LendEDU and Experian’s. The full reports can be found online on the LendEDU website at https://lendedu.com/student-loan-debt-by-school-by-state-2019/ and the Experian article at www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/research/student-loan-balance-by-age/.
