Student Loan Debt Statistics

Americans owe $1.74 trillion in student loan debt.

The Biden administration has repeatedly attempted to forgive student loan debt, but a federal appeals court on Aug. 9, 2024, extended an order blocking it from moving ahead with its Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) relief plan.

Our student loan debt statistics page looks at the burdens borrowers face. Continue reading for more.

Key student loan debt statistics

• Americans owe $1.74 trillion in federal and private student loan debt as of the second quarter of 2024. That’s down 0.96% from the second quarter of 2023. $130.28 billion of that total through Sept. 30, 2023, is private student loan debt.
• Students and parents borrowed an estimated $98.2 billion in the 2022-23 academic year. 44% of this was federal unsubsidized loans, 16% was federal subsidized loans, 15% was private or other nonfederal loans, 14% was Grad PLUS loans and 11% was Parent PLUS loans.
• 51% of the class of 2022 bachelor’s degree recipients who graduated from four-year public and private nonprofit colleges had student loan debt. They left school with an average of $29,400 in federal and private student loan debt. Those who graduated from private nonprofits had $22,200 in debt, while those from public colleges had $20,700 in debt. Private school graduates were slightly more likely to leave school with debt than public school graduates — 52% versus 49%.
• 46.2 million borrowers have federal student debt as of the second quarter of fiscal year 2023. That’s up from 45.3 million as of the second quarter of fiscal year 2022.
• 0.65% of student loans are 90 days or more delinquent as of the second quarter of 2024. That’s down from 0.63% in the second quarter of 2023 and 6.97% in the second quarter of 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Historic look at federal and private student loan debt

Federal student loan portfolio

Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid office allows us to dive into how much federal student loan debt borrowers carry by loan program, repayment plan and more.

The following data is from the second quarter of 2024 (except for the servicer information, which is updated as of March 2024).

Federal student loan debt statistics by loan program

Federal student loan debt statistics by loan debt

Federal student loan debt statistics by loan status (direct loan program)

Federal student loan debt statistics by repayment plan (direct loan program)

Federal student loan debt by servicer

Federal and private student loan debt by state

Here’s a LendingTree analysis of student loan debt by state based on the anonymized credit reports of more than 388,000 LendingTree users in the second quarter of 2024.

Average student loan debt by state

Private student loan debt statistics

While certain sources track federal and private student loan data together, others gather based on private loans alone. Here’s a closer look at some stats in that realm:

• Americans owe an estimated $130.28 billion to private student lenders as of the third quarter of 2023. This accounts for an estimated 7.5% of total outstanding federal and private student loan debt.
• 14 contributors to the Enterval Analytics Private Student Loan Report — Citizens Bank, Discover Bank, Navient, PNC Bank, Sallie Mae Bank, SoFi, College Ave Student Loans, Navy Federal Credit Union and six members from the Education Finance Council — account for 65.6% of outstanding private student loan debt.
• Undergraduate loans account for 89.1% and graduate loans account for 10.9% of the outstanding balance held by those 14 contributors.
• Among the private student loans held by those contributors as of the end of the third quarter of 2023, 74.3% are in repayment, 18.0% are in deferment, 6.3% are in a grace period and 1.4% are in forbearance.
• 1.5% of private student loans are 90 days or more delinquent as of the third quarter of 2023, compared with 1.6% the year prior.
• 93.1% of undergraduate and 69.2% of graduate private loans were cosigned during the 2023-24 academic year.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness statistics

LendingTree has an in-depth student loan forgiveness statistics roundup that looks at various types of programs. Still, we thought we’d provide a separate breakdown of the latest on the impactful Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.

The Federal Student Aid data here is through June 2023 — the latest available — and looks at the PSLF programs as a whole, including PSLF, Temporary Expanded PSLF (TEPSLF) and the limited waiver:

• PSLF borrowers with one or more approved PSLF employment certification forms and a positive loan balance: 2,062,648
• Total combined PSLF forms submitted: 6,147,812, with 3,997,781 completed forms
• Unique borrowers granted PSLF (PSLF, TEPSLF and waiver): 670,264 (versus 500,519 through March 2023)
• Average balance forgiven (PSLF, TEPSLF and waiver): $69,776 (versus $68,547 through March 2023)

Sources

• LendingTree
• Federal Reserve
• Enterval Analytics
• College Board
• Federal Reserve Bank of New York
• Federal Student Aid (here and here)