New Data Reveal Extent of Oregon Student Loan Debt

More than half of Oregon college grads are in debt

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More than 50 percent of Oregon college grads are in debt, and Oregon is ranked 22nd in the country for its amount of average student loan debt per borrower.

That amount per borrower in Oregon is $27,500, according to a new data gathered by LendEDU, a student loan refinancing company.

Utah is the state with the least amount of average debt per borrower, with $18,425 per borrower; Pennsylvania is the state with the most with an average of $36,193 per borrower.

According to the LendEDU data, 57 percent of Oregon college grads are in debt.

For public Oregon colleges and universities, the University of Oregon has an average student loan debt of $26,164 per borrower — slightly less than Oregon State University, Portland State University and Western and Eastern Oregon Universities. Southern Oregon University is the only public college with less — at $23,603 in debt per borrower.

On the West Coast, Oregon is the only state that has had an increase in the amount of student debt per borrower from 2016 to 2017 — an increase of 1.63 percent. California had a decrease of 0.47 percent while Washington had a decrease of 3.33 percent. Both California and Washington also have less college graduates with debt than Oregon — 50 percent and 52 percent respectively.

Nationally, the numbers for student loan debt and repayment are bleak. According to the data, “$1.52 trillion is the total amount of outstanding student loan debt.” There are currently 45 million student loan borrowers. More than 7 million people in the U.S. have defaulted on their student loans. The federal Department of Education has an estimated profit of $127 billion over the next 10 years. 

And let’s not talk about Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ yacht or mansion