The Institute for College Access and Success published a study in Dec. 2013 listing Louisiana as having the 10th lowest average student debt at graduation for the class of 2012, with $22,789.
The study, titled Student Debt in the Class of 2012, examined more than half of the country’s universities who volunteered their data for the study.
Louisiana also had the third lowest percentage of graduates in debt with 48 percent in 2012, according to the study.
The state with the highest percentage of graduates in debt was South Dakota with 78 percent, followed by New Hampshire with 74 percent.
In 2012 the University had 37 percent of attending students receiving student loans, with the average loan total at $5,655, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. For comparison, the University of Alabama had 44 percent of students receiving loans averaging $13,089. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette had 37 percent of students receiving loans with an average of $4,864.
California had the second lowest average student debt at $20,269, behind New Mexico where only 45 percent of graduates were in the data pool according to the study.
The state with the highest average student debt was Delaware, with $33,649 per student.
Most of the states with highest amounts of student debt and students in debt reside in the North and Northeastern parts of the U.S., while the lowest tended to be in the Western U.S. or the South, according to the study.
University President F. King Alexander said he thinks the reason students in the Northeast have more student debt is because “from Maryland to Maine” people in the Northeast tend to see the price of an educational institution as a good indicator of its quality.
Alexander said he thinks one of the reasons Louisiana students are comparatively debt-free is the presence of TOPS. Louisiana is one of 14 states with a TOPS-like program or a merit-based HOPE scholarship, Alexander said.
The future of TOPS may be in jeopardy though, Alexander said.
Currently 95 percent of state student aid goes to TOPS, Alexander said. He said he thinks the state legislature will move toward balancing TOPS with need-based aid like the GO Grant Program, which helps to fill in the gap left by federal need-based aid, according to the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance.
Another reason Alexander cited as to why Louisiana students have such little debt is that Louisiana is a low-cost state for higher education. He said the $7,800 University charges in tuition and fees is cheaper than the average for a state research university, which he said is around $9,800.