<p>"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." ...</p>
<p>Are you Class of 2012 Parents seeing this trend too?</p>
<p>The</a> Associated Press: Average debt up again for new college grads</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Average cost of a new car $29,793</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nada.org/NR/rdonlyres/0798BE2A-9291-44BF-A126-0D372FC89B8A/0/NADA_DATA_08222011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nada.org/NR/rdonlyres/0798BE2A-9291-44BF-A126-0D372FC89B8A/0/NADA_DATA_08222011.pdf</a></p>
<p>Is it government loan only? I don’t see how schools would find out all the student private loans and the parents loans?</p>
<p>NBC news printed some interesting info on avg student loan debt
[Student</a> loan debt hits record high, study shows - Bottom Line](<a href=“http://bottomline.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/18/14535163-student-loan-debt-hits-record-high-study-shows?lite]Student”>http://bottomline.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/18/14535163-student-loan-debt-hits-record-high-study-shows?lite)</p>
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<p>The study says that loans include private and parent loans–information easily gathered by various reporting agencies.</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“The study says that loans include private and parent loans–information easily gathered by various reporting agencies.”</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>She is amazed at the loans some of her UG/Grad friends have.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><a href=“http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/17/student-loans-is-there-really-a-crisis/[/url]”>http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/17/student-loans-is-there-really-a-crisis/</a></p>
<p>What does “on average” mean? Are there some tables or charts to look at? Tell us who has lots of loans.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.:)</p>
<p>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?</p>
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<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>^^ Hawaiian students looking to leave the state for school may benefit from the WUE program.</p>
<p>The impact of education debt is grossly hyped. Reasonable amounts of debt carry a reasonable payment load. The problem is really about having poor job possibilities upon graduation. And the growing problem in the past three years is related to students electing to borrow their way through semi-useful graduate programs to mask the effects of a real horrible domestic job market.</p>
<p>$26,600 is not an outrageous amount of debt. That’s less than my D’s COA would have been at our state flagship for a single year. It’s also not that much more than the debt I had coming out of school back in 1984, which was easily repaid in a few years (much better job market). However, I don’t think it’s the average debt that’s the problem - it’s the families on the high end who are bankrupting the kids’ futures for “dream” schools or for-profit schools that don’t result in a job or majors that will not lead to jobs that can service the huge loans.</p>
<p>I don’t think a comparison of student loan debt to a similar amount of consumer debt (such as a car loan, with which it is often compared) is really valid, since consumer debt is dischargeable in bankruptcy, and student loan debt is not. Also, while the $26,600 figure may not seem insurmountable, in recent years many graduating students have not been able to locate employment that would allow them to begin repaying the debt promptly, so the amount rapidly escalates with interest and fees.</p>
<p>Those figures actually seem low to me. I figure it’s not unusual for students to borrow $3000-$6000 per semester for a state school.</p>