Minnesota ranks 4th in student debt

Surprise, surprise.  This whining dinosaur has been complaining about student debt for years.

From the Strib:

College students who graduated in 2010 piled up an average of $25,250 in student loan debt, showed a report released Thursday. That's up about 5 percent from the previous year.

Minnesota graduates had more debt than that -- $29,058, for the fourth highest average in the country, according to the Project on Student Debt's annual report. The state also ranked fifth in the proportion of students with debt, at 71 percent.

Last year, Minnesota ranked sixth in average debt and third in percentage of students with debt. Of the state's colleges and universities included in the report, Minneapolis College of Art and Design graduates carried the greatest average debt: $44,385. About 88 percent of its 2010 grads had debt.

The report does not include for-profit colleges, whose graduates traditionally have higher debt loads than their public and private nonprofit counterparts.

The Project on Student Debt notes that nation's growing student debt loads coincide with a record 9.1 percent unemployment rate. But "that's still less than half the unemployment rate for young adults with only a high school diploma," the report said.