Student Debt Rises for Class of 2010

UNDATED (AP) _ The latest student loan figures give a fresh snapshot of what many experts call an alarming reliance on borrowed money to pay for college.

Figures compiled by The Project on Student Debt show members of the class of 2010 who took out student loans owed on average $25,250 upon graduation, a 5 percent increase from the class of 2009.

Roughly two-thirds of the class of 2010 borrowed for college, and they faced a 9.1 percent unemployment rate for new college graduates. That’s still less than half the rate for people with just a high school diploma.

The figures do not include students at for-profit colleges, where students borrow nearly 50 percent more.

Students in the Northeast and Midwest generally had substantially higher debts than those in the West.

Complaints about student debt have been front and center at a number of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)

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