Student loan debt has become a major issue in the United States in recent years. It could continue to grow as the College Board reported that tuition at public college’s increased for the 2021-22 academic year. Growth in federal grant aid ended as well.
Although tuition costs didn’t grow as much as they have in the past, they still jumped 4.8 percent for in-state students and 4.2 percent for out-of-state students in the current academic year. The average cost for an in-state student jumped to $17,860. Out-of-state students incurred an average cost of $30,911.
Meanwhile, full-time undergraduates received an estimated average of $5,750 in grant aid. When subtracted from the total cost of attending the school, you get the net price of attendance. This number has increased each year since the 20020-21 academic year.
High costs of tuition could potentially lead to more student debt. With more student debt, graduates may find themselves depleting their emergency funds to help make payments.
Student Debt On The Rise
The amount of college debt a graduating senior left school with continued to increase in 2021, according to a report from the Project on Student Debt. The report found that two-thirds of college seniors who graduated from a public or private nonprofit four-year school in 2021 had student debt.
The average debt among those two-thirds of graduating seniors was $26,600. That was a 5 percent jump from 2020, when seniors had an average of $25,250 in debt. This number doesn’t include students who graduated from four-year for-profit colleges. Many of those schools don’t report the data needed to compile average debt. However, the Department of Education found that students at these schools are more likely to borrow. That means that the number found by the Project on Student Debt could be low compared to the actual amount of debt all college graduates carry.