Average student loan debt tops $25,000

This post comes from Seth Fiegerman at partner site MainStreet.

Students are graduating from college with an ever-increasing amount of student loan debt, a new study from a nonprofit education group shows.

Two-thirds of all students who graduated college in 2010 owed money for loans, and those that did held an average loan debt of $25,250, according to data from the nonprofit Institute for College Access and Success. That represents a 5% increase over the average student loan debt in 2009.

As bad as that may sound, the actual average debt per student might be even higher as the report only factors in data from four-year public and private nonprofit colleges and not from for-profit institutions, which often have higher tuition costs. Post continues after video.

The average student loan debt also varies significantly by state. Several states in the Northeast, including Maine and Vermont, have an average student loan debt of nearly $30,000 -- and New Hampshire is the one state in the country to break the $30,000 mark, with an average debt of $31,048 per graduate.

The increasing amount of student loan debt is further compounded by the rising unemployment rate among college graduates. As the Institute points out in its report, the unemployment rate for college graduates 24 and under was 9.1% in 2010, up from 8.7% the year before. The net result is many students have more debt to pay down and less income with which to do it.

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