Borrowing and outcomes
Student debt by state and college
Across the 2,945 U.S. colleges that report both figures, median federal student debt at graduation is $19,500, and a median of 43.6% of students take federal loans. Choose a state for per-college figures. Every page shows the borrower share next to the dollar amount, because a median debt figure describes only the students who borrowed.
Which student-debt number this is
Debt at graduation, by college: what students who borrowed had taken in federal loans by the time they finished at a particular institution. Most published “average student debt by state” figures measure the total balance carried by borrowers who live in that state, including graduate borrowing and years of accrued interest, and are much larger. Both are real and they answer different questions. This one is for comparing colleges.
Browse by state
49 states have at least 8 colleges reporting both figures, the floor below which a median describes too few schools to state honestly. States under that floor are not listed rather than shown with a number we would have to qualify away.
Northeast
Midwest
South
- Alabama43 colleges
- Arkansas45 colleges
- Florida126 colleges
- Georgia83 colleges
- Kentucky48 colleges
- Louisiana47 colleges
- Maryland39 colleges
- Mississippi29 colleges
- North Carolina80 colleges
- Oklahoma45 colleges
- South Carolina57 colleges
- Tennessee61 colleges
- Texas192 colleges
- Virginia77 colleges
- West Virginia32 colleges
- District of Columbia13 colleges
What this data is
Median federal loan debt at graduation, joined to the share of students taking federal loans, from the U.S. Department of Education (College Scorecard / IPEDS) as carried in CampusPin’s committed snapshot of 2026-08-13. Federal loans only: private loans and parent PLUS borrowing are outside this data, so real household borrowing is higher. Figures describe students who borrowed and completed, not all students.
Canonical URL: https://campuspin.com/student-debt