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From the Take-This-With-a-Grain-of-Salt-Department:

It's an interesting list, but limited in its usefulness, as it appears to be fairly raw data:

It ranked the nonprofit institutions according to 

. As it mentions toward the bottom of the article: 

Clearly, big schools will have bigger debt loads.

It stops its "number crunching" there, and tells those interested in more illuminating numbers -- per-student debt figures -- to "see the linked source material."

Cumulative Four-Year Repayment Rate by Institution

 section it refers to, I compared the numbers on the 

Median Federal Debt For Those Entering Repayment

 column and saw that the U doesn't seem to have such a high rank anymore.

Just this week, US News & World Report released its 

, and the U of M was nowhere to be found -- not even on the regional rankings. The only Minnesota college that placed was 

 (2nd among Midwest regional universities), which apparently had 81% of its graduates holding debt, the average amount being $40,401.

But I've just been eyeballing the Gawker list, and I'm the last person to claim to know the right methodology.

Does anyone know whether Gawker's list holds water?

Education News

On Campus Blog

Alex Friedrich

Author

swamysk via Flickr Now why did I go to school? From the Take-This-With-a-Grain-of-Salt-Department: I just got Gawker’s Top Ten Universities for Student Debt list forwarded by a colleague. It’s an interesting list, but limited in its usefulness, as it appears to be fairly raw data: 1) New York University: $659 million 2) University of Southern California:…

Gawker: University of Minnesota has 5th highest total student debt load

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