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A variety of new reports out this week found that the rise of college tuition costs and borrowing rates has slowed, but the nation’s collective student loan debt is still on the rise.
The College Board released its annual Trends in College Prices and Trends in Student Aid reports and found that college prices are still climbing, but they’re doing so at a slower rate.
Average published tuition and fees for full-time in-state students at public four-year colleges increased 2.9 percent from 2013-14 to 2014-15. At two-year colleges it increased 3.3 percent and at private nonprofit colleges, it increased by 3.7 percent.
Though the published prices still increased, when adjusted for inflation, the College Board found that the increase in prices was smaller than over the past decade.
Total education borrowing dropped by 8 percent in the past year, and per-student borrowing fell by 6 percent.
Both reductions are larger than the slight decreases seen in the previous two years, Inside Higher Education reported, but this can be explained in part by the overall dip in college enrollment.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
Still about 60 percent of students who earned bachelor’s degrees in 2012-13 from public and private nonprofit colleges graduated with debt, according to the College Board report. The average amount per borrower was $27,300, an increase of 13 percent over the past five years.
That’s close to the amount discovered by a separate report on the class of 2013 released Wednesday by the Institute for College Access and Success.
They found that students in the class of 2013 who took out loans to attend public and private nonprofit colleges graduated with an average of debt of $28,400, a 2 percent increase from the class of 2012.
About 70 percent of graduates had student loans, the report says, but the amount they owed varied widely across different institutions and states.
Six states — New Hampshire, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Minnesota, and Connecticut — had graduates with average student loan debt in excess of $30,000. New Mexico and California, at $18,656 and $20,340, respectively, were the states with the lowest average student loan debt, according to the report.
This report reflects only the money that students graduating in 2013 borrowed and doesn’t factor in all of the same components as the College Board, making it not directly comparable.
But all reports do show a trend upward, though growth in costs and borrowing seems to be slowing down.
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That was a stunning loss because bond funds aren’t supposed to be that volatile. The average intermediate-term bond fund last year lost just 5%, the story says. Bonds should be less risky than stocks and help preserve capital as enrollment nears.