Student loan debt analysis mostly negative, with one big Kansas bright spot

A lot can change over the course of a decade, and when it comes to student loan debt, most of that change has been in the negative direction.

“2017 is the most recent fully available data set for financial aid information. We’re going from 2007 to 2017. When it came to Kansas, they had $19,186 student loan debt per borrower in 2007,” said LendEDU’s Mike Brown. In 2017, that number had increased to $27,167.”

Bethel College in Kansas actually had its average student’s loan balance go down from over $20,000 to around $5,600, but that’s by no means the norm.

“Student loan debt per borrower in Kansas, on average, raised by about $8,000,” said Brown. “Percent change of 41.59%. This was 26th out of all 50 states and Washington D.C.”

Bethel is the only college in Kansas with a drop. Baker University was 2nd, with just a 12% increase.

“They actually saw an increase in the percent of graduates with student loan debt from 2007 to 2017 by 1.28%,” said Brown. “They’re still trending down.”

Twenty-nine states actually reduced their number of graduates with debt over the decade.