The Institute for College Access & Success states in a press release today:
Students who borrowed for college and earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011 graduated with an average $26,600 in student loan debt, up from $25,250 in 2010, according to a new report from the Project on Student Debt at The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS). This five-percent increase is similar to the average annual increase in recent years. The report also found that about two-thirds of the Class of 2011 had loans, and that private (non-federal) student loans comprised about one-fifth of what they owed.
Student Debt and the Class of 2011 includes lists of high- and low-debt states and colleges. The report’s findings focus solely on public and private nonprofit four-year colleges, because so few for-profit colleges chose to report the necessary data. However, federal survey data show that nationwide, graduates of for-profit four-year colleges are much more likely to borrow federal and private student loans, and they borrow significantly more than their counterparts at other types of colleges.
They go to observe:
The unemployment rate for young college graduates was 8.8 percent in 2011, a slight drop from 2010’s record high of 9.1 percent. Many more young graduates were underemployed, working just part-time or in lower paying jobs that did not require a college education. Still, college graduates are much better off than those without a college degree. The unemployment rate for young high school graduates was 19.1 percent in 2011, more than double the rate for those with bachelor’s degrees.
Read the whole press release, or their entire report.