19 Eye-Opening Student Debt Statistics

Going to college is more of an expectation these days as companies put more value on degrees when hiring. In fact, many employers require a degree to even be considered for an entry-level position.

However, the college graduates don’t always have the best financial outcome. A lot of students face serious debt right out of the gate thanks to unmanageable student loans. And the money graduates make when they start working can make it difficult to pay down balances quickly.

How much debt a student takes on depends on several factors, including the school, location, and type of loan. The debt load will also depend on how much assistance the student receives, which can come from family, scholarships, or grants, and how long they’re in school.

A college degree has been shown to lead to higher pay, but that might not offset the massive student debt the graduate took on to get there. And poorly managed student debt can even keep people from major life milestones in the future. Here’s a look at some staggering student debt statistics in America.

Student loan debt in America has reached a whopping $1.813 trillion¹, and nearly 43 million Americans carry student loan debt. This number may come as no surprise given the growing cost of attending a four-year college.

Quarter	Total (in millions)	YoY Change
2025 Q2	$1,813,619.89	4.16%
2024 Q2	$1,741,137.84	-1.14%
2023 Q2	$1,761,243.55	0.99%
2022 Q2	$1,744,007.00	1.45%
2021 Q2	$1,719,067.51	2.78%

In fact, tuition bills at private nonprofit universities have climbed an average of 4% per year above and beyond inflation over the last decade, according to the Trends in College Pricing² report from The College Board.

The average annual cost to attend a public four-year college is nearly $25,000 for in-state tuition with room and board and other fees. It’s no wonder more students and their parents lean on loans to afford college these days. This may also explain why over one-third of the total student loan debt is still outstanding.

About one-third of student loan borrowers say they believe the financial cost of earning a bachelor’s degree outweigh the benefits, according to a study from NerdWallet.³ That’s pretty alarming considering some of those same people will pursue a degree anyway.

Student loan debt can definitely cause strain on a monthly budget, but keeping expenses low in the first few years after graduating can make room for bigger monthly payments.

The faster you pay down your student loans, the faster you can start actually benefiting from your college degree.

Taking on debt may be the only road to a degree for those who don’t have family or scholarships that will cover tuition.

Pew Research Center analysis found that 52% of young college graduates with student loans live in families earning at least $75,000 a year, compared with just 18% of those without a bachelor’s degree.⁴

More than half of college graduates with student loans come from families earning $75,000 or more per year.

On the flip side, about 53% of young adults without a bachelor’s degree earn less than $40,000, compared with 21% of young college graduates with student loans. That shows a college degree can be a necessity for career and income growth.

But that doesn’t mean you should take on the entire cost to make a good salary. Applying for grants or scholarships, choosing an in-state or less expensive school, and living at home to save on room and board are all realistic ways to reduce your debt burden.

Millennials may have the highest consumer debt on average, but they come in below Gen X when it comes to student loan debt.

In fact, data from The Federal Student Aid report found that Generation X carries the most student loan debt at an average of $46,555.56 per borrower.⁵ That’s over $2,000 more in student loan debt per borrower compared with older millennial student loan holders and $13,000 more than young millennials and older Gen Zers.

Meanwhile, baby boomers have an average of $43,172.41 in student loan debt — the second-highest student loan balance and just slightly higher than the average owed by millennials. Overall, the national average of student loan debt across all consumers was $38,375 as of the first quarter in 2025, according to the Experian survey.

African-American students who earned a bachelor’s degree carried the highest median debt across all ethnic groups at $52,726, according to data from the 2025 Education Data Initiative Student Loan Debt by Race study.⁶

Specifically, this group of graduates had the highest borrowing rate at 81%, compared with a 39% borrowing rate for Asian students, a 59% borrowing rate for white students, and a 60% borrowing rate for Hispanic or Latino students during the same academic year.

Gender disparities in our society even reach student debt, as more women take on loans to earn a degree. Women hold nearly two-thirds of the nation’s nearly $1.8 trillion in student loan debt, amounting to a whopping $833 billion.⁷

Female graduates owe nearly $31,700 in student debt, on average. Considering female graduates are paid 89% of what their male peers earn after graduating and entering the workforce, it’s no wonder female graduates take an additional two years to pay off their loans.

Even more concerning is that Black female borrowers are disproportionately affected by student debt, carrying the highest loan balance upon graduation, with an average of $41,466 in student loan debt.

A majority of students still need loans, especially as the cost of college increases. In 2023, 57% of students aged 18 to 29 with bachelor’s degrees reported using student loans to finance their education.⁸

That number rises to 60% for those with graduate degrees. But perhaps the most concerning finding in that research was that 71% of borrowers with a graduate degree had more than $25,000 in debt.

When you think of student loans, you usually only think of college kids borrowing money. But in many cases, it is both students and parents who take out loans.

The 2024 How America Pays for College study from Sallie Mae found that 49% of families borrowed money in the 2017-18 school year to help pay for undergraduate education.⁹

Among those who took out student loans, 11% were borrowed solely by parents, and 12% were borrowed directly by students.

Keeping up with student loan payments is critical for maintaining a healthy credit file and avoiding late fees and penalties. Unfortunately, many graduates find it hard to manage payments and end up defaulting. This is when a borrower has not made a payment toward their education debt in 270 days, which triggers the account to be sent to a third-party collection agency.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, some 250,000 student loan borrowers defaulted on payments every quarter, according to the Underwater on Student Debt research report by the Urban Institute¹⁰. That comes to a total of 1 million borrowers who default on their loans each year.

Meanwhile, as of mid-2025, nearly 31% of all borrowers had a payment due, the highest delinquency rate recorded.¹¹

Student loans aren’t your only option when it comes to paying for college. Scholarships, grants, and several other programs can help supplement your tuition expenses.

According to the 2024 Sallie Mae report, 64% of families used scholarships to pay some portion of college expenses in 2023-2024. Scholarships represent the second most-used resource to pay for an undergraduate’s education, after parent savings and income. The average total award among those who used one or more scholarships was $8,250.

Type of Funding	Percent of families using in 2024	Average amount	Percent of families using in 2023	Average amount
Scholarships	64%	$6,596	61%	$7,822
Grants	60%	$5,361	57%	$5,934

Scholarship money paid for 27% of college costs in the 2023-2024 school year. More interestingly, colleges award three times the amount of scholarship money, on average, than other sources combined.

The reality is that many students would not be able to afford college without these scholarships, or they’d be on the hook for a larger loan bill.

Student loan repayments usually go into effect a couple of months after graduation, depending on your loan provider and terms, and missing payments can be detrimental to your overall financial health. Yet as of 2025, some 10% of borrowers, including students and parents, went into default within three years of their first payment.¹²

Defaulting on a loan is defined as having gone at least 270 days without a payment. The same report found that millions of student loan borrowers are behind on payments and that 1 million loans go into default each year.

Although this may seem counterintuitive, a study published in Education Data Initiative found that roughly 50% of borrowers in default owe less than $20,000.¹³

This is likely due to the fact that students who do not complete degrees tend to have lower debt levels than college graduates, but they also have lower earnings, which makes repayment more difficult.

A 2023 report from the Pew Research Center found that graduates from lower-income families are more than twice as likely to default on their loans as their peers from higher-income families.¹⁴

Meanwhile, this report also found that 61% of respondents who used public assistance (such as Medicaid or SNAP) had experienced student loan default.

For undergraduate borrowers who got their loan after July 1, 2024, and before July 1, 2025, Federal Student Aid reported that the average student loan interest rate among all households with student debt was 6.39%, which included both federal and private student loans.¹⁵

Loan Type	Borrower Type	Fixed Interest Rate
Direct Subsidized Loans and Direct Unsubsidized Loans	Undergraduate	6.39%
Direct Unsubsidized Loans	Graduate or Professional	7.94%
Direct PLUS Loans	Parents and Graduate or Professional Students	8.94%

This means a student or parent who borrows $30,000 and takes 10 years to pay off the balance will pay approximately $10,676.07 in interest charges.

With so many student loans going into default every year, you’d think the number of people carrying significant balances would be much higher. However, only 9% of all student loan borrowers owe more than $100,000, and 26% of borrowers with advanced degrees did.¹⁶

On the other hand, 16% of those who took out student loans owe less than $5,000 in debt.

College tuition and books aren’t the only school expenses students struggle with. Many don’t have money to pay for basic living costs, including food, transportation, or shelter.

According to an Urban Institute analysis conducted using the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, 22% of students at public universities and colleges borrow at least $30,000 to finance their living expenses.¹

Students have a few options when it comes to borrowing for college, including both federal and private student loans. An estimated 92% of student loans are federal (not private) loans, according to the research from BestColleges.⁸

This is good news for these borrowers because interest rates are lower on federal loans than they are on private student loans and come with better repayment terms.

Where a student chooses to attend college can greatly affect his or her debt balance. One Education Data Initiative report found that student loan debt from four-year colleges varies widely from state to state.¹⁷

State	Average Borrower Debt	State’s Total Debt	State	Average Borrower Debt	State’s Total Debt
District of Columbia	$54,561	$6.4 billion	Massachusetts	$35,400	$32.6 billion
Maryland	$43,781	$37.1 billion	Ohio	$35,072	$62.6 billion
Georgia	$42,226	$71.7 billion	New Hampshire	$34,860	$6.7 billion
Virginia	$40,287	$44.3 billion	Louisiana	$34,821	$23.8 billion
Florida	$39,574	$108.1 billion	Nevada	$34,756	$12.7 billion
Illinois	$39,042	$63.4 billion	Maine	$34,355	$6.5 billion
Hawaii	$38,929	$4.8 billion	New Mexico	$34,256	$7.8 billion
North Carolina	$38,929	$53.5 billion	Montana	$34,215	$4.4 billion
Delaware	$38,856	$5.3 billion	Minnesota	$34,163	$26.9 billion
New York	$38,751	$96.3 billion	Arkansas	$34,024	$13.8 billion
South Carolina	$38,715	$30.0 billion	Utah	$33,872	$10.9 billion
California	$38,300	$151.5 billion	Texas	$33,770	$131.9 billion
Oregon	$38,036	$20.3 billion	Kentucky	$33,691	$20.7 billion
Alabama	$37,819	$24.9 billion	Idaho	$33,621	$7.4 billion
Vermont	$37,760	$2.9 billion	Rhode Island	$33,400	$5.0 billion
Mississippi	$37,552	$17.0 billion	Indiana	$33,234	$30.1 billion
Colorado	$37,393	$29.2 billion	Kansas	$33,013	$12.7 billion
New Jersey	$37,287	$46.5 billion	Wisconsin	$32,619	$23.6 billion
Tennessee	$37,054	$33.1 billion	West Virginia	$32,343	$7.4 billion
Michigan	$36,973	$51.6 billion	Oklahoma	$32,245	$16.4 billion
Connecticut	$36,837	$19.1 billion	Puerto Rico	$32,239	$10.8 billion
Washington	$36,709	$29.0 billion	Nebraska	$32,206	$8.0 billion
Pennsylvania	$36,120	$67.4 billion	South Dakota	$31,171	$3.7 billion
Alaska	$35,874	$2.4 billion	Iowa	$30,698	$13.2 billion
Arizona	$35,792	$32.9 billion	Wyoming	$30,631	$1.7 billion
Missouri	$35,650	$29.7 billion	North Dakota	$29,115	$2.6 billion

2025 state averages for the amount of average federal debt per student ranged from a low of $29,115 in North Dakota to a high of $43,781 in Maryland, according to the report. And while it’s not a state, the District of Columbia topped the list with an average borrower debt of $54,561.

But that average debt doesn’t necessarily correspond with how much federal student debt the state has, overall. California has the most total federal student loan debt with $151.5 billion, but that only comes out to $38,300 per student.

Income-driven repayment plans offered to some federal student loan borrowers help graduates maintain lower monthly payments. Borrowers can request to limit monthly payments to a certain percentage of their income — typically between 10% to 20% — through this program, which can potentially forgive the remaining balance after a certain term.

More than 7 million federal student loan borrowers are currently on an income-driven repayment plan.¹⁸

_{¹ https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics 
² https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/Trends-College-Pricing-2024-presentation.pdf 
³ https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/30-of-student-loan-borrowers-say-college-wasnt-worth-the-debt 
⁴ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/18/facts-about-student-loans/ 
⁵ https://studentaid.gov/data-center/student/portfolio 
⁶ https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-race 
⁷ https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-gender 
⁸ https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/average-student-loan-debt/
⁹ https://www.salliemae.com/content/dam/slm/writtencontent/Research/HAP_2024.pdf 
¹⁰ https://www.urban.org/research/publication/underwater-student-debt 
¹¹ https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/jun/24/student-loans-delinquency-default
¹² https://educationdata.org/student-loan-default-rate 
¹³ https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-payment 
¹⁴ https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/05/04/many-student-loan-borrowers-vulnerable-to-default-when-payments-resume
¹⁵ https://studentaid.gov/help-center/answers/article/what-is-current-interest-rate-for-direct-unsubsidized-loans 
¹⁶ https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/2000191-Student-Debt-Who-Borrows-Most-What-Lies-Ahead.pdf 
¹⁷ https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-state
¹⁸ https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107150}