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today's national news about this years Project on Student Debt report

 that says the average American college student graduated with more than $25,000 in debt last year.

The average debt of new college grads here went up more than 5 percent last year to $29,000 -- the fourth-highest debt load among American students at public and private colleges.

Minnesotans are also more likely than average to take out student loans. More than 70 percent do, giving them the fifth-highest rate in the nation.

I called up policy analyst Tricia Grimes at the state Office of Higher Education, who said those numbers match what she's been seeing.

But the impact of such borrowing isn't as dire here as it has been in other states, she said.

So why is Minnesota near the top (or bottom, if you prefer) of the debt ranking?

Grimes wasn't sure, but she had some hunches. (She said she still needs to get data to check her ideas, though.)

 Minnesotans might borrow more frequently because students here got into the student loan program earlier than those in many other states. So the tradition of borrowing -- and not defaulting -- is there. We're about 2-2.5 generations into borrowing, she said:

 People in Minnesota "tend to work hard and repay things they borrow, and things like high median income here and the relatively low unemployment rate here would tend to go along with that. People tend to have jobs that allow them to replay their loans."

 It's higher here than the national average. That could be seen an an indication that people here understand the difference between "good debt" (investments in the future, such houses and college) and "bad debt" (consumer- and luxury items). She said:

But those are all untested theories, she said. And the vast differences between states make it difficult to prove such ideas.

Midwestern and northeastern states may have higher student debt because a higher proportion of students there attend more expensive private, nonprofit colleges, she said, something the authors of the report also noticed. In the West, by contrast, the percentage of private-college students is lower.

Grimes cautioned between drawing too many conclusions from debt rankings among individual schools. Grads from the University of Minnesota - Duluth, for example, had the highest average public-school debt in the state with about $30,000. In the private-school sector, Minneapolis College of Art and Design students topped the chart at $44,000.

Education News

On Campus Blog

Alex Friedrich

Author

You may be familiar with today’s national news about this years Project on Student Debt report that says the average American college student graduated with more than $25,000 in debt last year. In Minnesota, it’s even worse. The average debt of new college grads here went up more than 5 percent last year to $29,000…

Possible reasons Minnesota students are among the biggest borrowers

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