Where U.S. Student Debt Is Highest & Lowest

U.S. President Joe Biden has said he will cancel up to $10,000 student in federal student loans fees for American borrowers earning under $125,000 a year. He will also forgive as much as $20,000 for low and middle income groups who have received Pell grants.

The total federal student debt has skyrocketed over the past decade, rising from around $500 billion in 2007 to $1.75 trillion as of 2021. But how is that distributed across states? As data from the Education Data Initiative shows, in 2022, the average total federal student loan debt in one of the 50 U.S. states, including Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, was $29.0 billion.

At the student level, the District of Columbia had the highest level of debt per borrower at $54,946, followed by Maryland ($42,861) and Georgia ($41,639). The lowest levels of debt per borrower were recorded in Puerto Rico which had $28,242 followed by North Dakota ($28,604) and Iowa ($30,464).