Student Debt 2013: Pew Research Center Predicts Hefty Bills For Spring Graduates

With the costs of college rising, it's no wonder that the amount of student debt has increased also. That isn't stopping people from seeing the benefit of a college education though. A Pew Research Center Analysis noted last year that the amount of U.S. households that owed money on student debt loans has more than doubled since 1989.

- In households headed by someone younger than 35 (a demographic that contains people more likely to be recent college grads), 40% had student-loan debt outstanding.

- The average student-loan debt outstanding in 2010 was $26,682, but 10% of student debtors owed more than $61,894.

Another table, released by the Pew Research Center, analyzes the distribution of total student debt by school and degree/certificate type for the 2007-2008 academic year.

- 25% of students who earned bachelor’s degrees from private nonprofit institutions carried more than $30,000 in debt.

- Just 12% of public college graduates and an outstanding 57% of private, for-profit college students held the same amount of debt.

According to the College Board:

- Loans from all sources accounted for 40.4% of the $191.8 billion spent on financing undergraduate education in 2011-12.

- Grants from all sources accounted for 50.6% of the spending, with education tax benefits and work-study making up the rest.

According to 2009 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked 5th among 21 major countries studied in terms of reliance on households for funding higher education — 45.3% of total expenditures.

The data also revealed that on average, public sources accounted for 70% of total college expenditures in 31 countries studied by the OECD, compared to 38% in the United States.