10 states where borrowers owe the most student debt

Student loan debt in the U.S. is not spread evenly across the map, and the place with the heaviest average balance is not the place with the most borrowers. Average student loan debt per borrower measures something different from total debt outstanding, and the two figures produce nearly opposite rankings. California, Texas and New York hold enormous total balances largely because they have enormous populations. The places that rank highest per borrower are usually far smaller, and what sets them apart is the mix of schools their residents attend.

Three forces shape that mix. Graduate and professional degrees — law, medicine, business, public policy — stack three to seven years of borrowing on top of an undergraduate balance, usually at private tuition rates. Private nonprofit colleges charge several times what in-state public universities do, and students cover the difference with loans. Regional cost of living lifts the rest, since cost-of-attendance calculations include housing, food and transportation, not just tuition. States that combine all three sit near the top year after year.

Enrollment patterns matter as well. Research from the Brookings Institution has documented that Black borrowers carry larger balances than white borrowers holding the same degree. The gap traces to differences in family wealth and access to need-based aid, not to the price of any one school. States with several historically Black colleges and universities tend to reflect that pattern in their averages.

The distinction carries policy weight. Forgiveness thresholds, interest accrual and income-driven repayment rules land differently on someone repaying an in-state public university balance than on a medical school graduate. That is why national fights over student loans register unevenly from one region to the next.

This list covers 10 places — nine states and the District of Columbia, which the Department of Education tracks alongside states in its data. Most rank among the highest in the country for average balance per borrower. California and Texas appear as counterweights: a huge total can sit alongside a middling average. Exact rankings move a little each year as new cohorts graduate and others pay down balances, but the underlying driver holds steady: institution type, not population size.

Illustration: Quartz

Washington, D.C. posts the highest average student loan balance per borrower of any U.S. jurisdiction, and the cause is structural. The district is packed with graduate and professional schools, and graduate debt is the most expensive kind an American borrower can carry.

Georgetown University, George Washington University, American University and Howard University all run law schools within a few miles of one another, and several operate medical, business or public policy programs alongside them. Those degrees are not four-year commitments. A law student borrows across three years on top of whatever undergraduate balance already exists; a medical student borrows across four, often followed by residency years when income is low and interest keeps accruing. Nearly all of that borrowing happens at private tuition rates, which run well above in-state public university prices.

Size does the rest of the work. D.C. has roughly 700,000 residents, fewer than many mid-sized cities, yet it hosts a concentration of professional degree programs more typical of an entire state. Dividing total balances by the number of borrowers rather than by residents means a small pool of people holding six-figure professional school debt pulls the average sharply upward. No large counterweight of public university graduates with modest balances drags it back down.

The local labor market reinforces the pattern. The district's economy runs on government agencies, law firms, advocacy groups, universities and nonprofits — employers that often require advanced credentials and that qualify many workers for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. PSLF requires 120 qualifying monthly payments, typically made under an income-driven plan at a fraction of what a standard repayment schedule would charge. Those borrowers are not racing to retire principal, so their balances stay visible in federal data for a decade or more.

Borrowers who attend college elsewhere and then move to D.C. for work add to the count as well, since loan data follows the borrower's address rather than the school's.

Illustration: Quartz

Maryland carries the highest average student loan balance of any state in the country, behind only the District of Columbia in rankings that include D.C. as a jurisdiction. The drivers are a workforce built around graduate credentials and a college mix tilted toward expensive programs.

Much of the state operates as part of the Washington metro economy. Residents of Montgomery and Prince George's counties commute into the district for work in federal agencies, law firms, consulting and government contracting — fields where a law degree, an MBA or a public policy master's is either required or heavily rewarded. Those credentials add years of borrowing on top of an undergraduate balance already on the books.

Johns Hopkins University accounts for another share. Its medical school, school of nursing, Bloomberg School of Public Health and research doctoral programs all charge private-institution tuition, and health professions graduates often finish with six-figure balances rather than the tens of thousands more typical of a public four-year degree.

Maryland is also home to four historically Black colleges and universities: Morgan State University, Bowie State University, Coppin State University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Research from the Brookings Institution has documented that Black graduates hold substantially more student debt than white graduates, and that the gap widens in the years after they leave school. Those borrowing patterns register in statewide averages.

Household income pushes the number up rather than down. Maryland ranks among the wealthiest states by median household income, which disqualifies many families from Pell Grants and other need-based federal aid. The cost does not disappear, so those families turn to unsubsidized federal loans and Parent PLUS loans, both of which accrue interest from disbursement.

Cost of living completes the picture. Housing around Baltimore and in the D.C. suburbs is expensive enough that cost-of-attendance budgets run well past tuition, even for students who stay in state. Together, those factors keep Maryland near the top of the per-borrower rankings.

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Georgia ranks among the top states for average student loan debt per borrower, and the explanation sits in metro Atlanta's private institutions rather than in the state's public universities. The elevated average reflects who borrows, not how many people borrow.

Atlanta is home to the Atlanta University Center Consortium, the largest grouping of historically Black colleges and universities in the country. Its members are Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University and the Morehouse School of Medicine. All four are private, with tuition set near national private-college levels and well above what the University of Georgia or Georgia Tech charge an in-state undergraduate. Students who enroll often borrow to close the gap between a financial aid package and the full cost of attendance, and that borrowing repeats each year of enrollment.

Emory University supplies the graduate and professional layer. Emory School of Law, Goizueta Business School and Emory School of Medicine enroll students who borrow at private rates for three or more years past a bachelor's degree. Medical and legal training produces balances several times the size of a typical four-year undergraduate loan.

Georgia's HOPE Scholarship pulls in the opposite direction, which makes the state's split more visible. Funded by the Georgia Lottery, HOPE and the higher-threshold Zell Miller Scholarship cover tuition, or a large share of it, for qualifying students at public colleges in the state. Students who attend Georgia's private colleges receive a fixed annual award instead, and that amount does not rise with private tuition.

The result is two borrower populations inside one state. Public university undergraduates who meet the academic requirements can finish with modest debt, while private-college and graduate students carry most of the balance. That is why the statewide figure reads higher than Georgia's public tuition prices would suggest. Separate the data by institution type and the pattern comes apart cleanly — a state aid program holding one group's borrowing down, and a dense cluster of private and professional schools pushing the other group's up.

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Virginia's high average student loan balance per borrower comes from the same engine that drives neighboring Maryland's: an economy wired into Washington that rewards graduate credentials. Northern Virginia's workforce in government contracting, defense, consulting and law is full of people who financed a law degree, an MBA or a master's in public policy.

Those credentials are where the borrowing concentrates. A graduate who takes a job in Arlington or Tysons after three years at the University of Virginia School of Law carries a balance built on professional school tuition. George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School feeds the same corridor. Undergraduate borrowing rarely reaches those figures. Commuters in the state's northern counties often earned their degrees across the Potomac at Georgetown, George Washington University or American University. The money was borrowed in one jurisdiction and recorded in another's residency totals.

Virginia's public flagships separate the state from cheaper-tuition peers. The University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary both charge in-state rates at the higher end for public universities, and their out-of-state prices rank among the steepest for public institutions nationally. Students who stay in state and enroll at a top Virginia public school still borrow in large numbers. That is less common in states where flagship tuition runs well below Virginia's.

The state also has a cluster of historically Black colleges and universities, among them Hampton University, Virginia State University and Norfolk State University. Hampton is private and prices accordingly. Across these campuses, many students are the first in their families to attend college, and they close the gap between aid offers and total cost with federal loans.

Cost-of-attendance budgets in Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax County run well above those across most of the South. Students living near the D.C. line borrow for rent and transportation on top of tuition. That pushes individual balances above what published tuition alone would suggest, and it keeps Virginia near the top of the per-borrower rankings even as its public system stays accessible by national standards.

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Florida's elevated average balance owes less to its public universities than to a decade of heavy enrollment at for-profit institutions, many of which have since closed. Those borrowers remain in repayment, and their balances keep the state's per-borrower figure high.

Several of the largest for-profit chains that later collapsed ran campuses in the state. Corinthian Colleges, which operated the Everest brand in Florida, shut down in 2015 after the Department of Education restricted its access to federal student aid and fined it over its job-placement claims. ITT Technical Institute closed every location, Florida's included, in 2016. Argosy University, with campuses in Sarasota and Tampa, closed in 2019 after its parent organization lost access to federal financial aid. Credits earned at these schools frequently did not transfer elsewhere, so students who left before finishing were stuck with loan balances and no credential to show for them.

Enrollment patterns elsewhere in the state add to the picture. The Florida College System's 28 institutions enroll large numbers of part-time students who work while taking classes, and part-time attendance stretches a two-year credential across three or four years. Each extra semester is another semester of borrowing for rent, transportation and food, even when tuition itself stays cheap.

The public four-year side runs the opposite direction. Florida has held in-state undergraduate tuition at its public universities flat since the 2013-14 academic year, and the Bright Futures Scholarship, funded by the Florida Lottery, covers 75% or 100% of tuition for students who meet its test-score and coursework benchmarks. A qualifying undergraduate at the University of Florida or Florida State University can finish owing little or nothing.

Florida's statewide average blends two groups with almost nothing in common: public university graduates who borrowed modestly, and former for-profit students carrying balances they have little prospect of clearing quickly. One number conceals both.

Illustration: Quartz

California holds one of the largest total student loan balances in the country and still posts a per-borrower average that trails the states at the top of this list. Roughly 39 million residents produce a very large pool of borrowers, which raises the statewide total without lifting the typical individual balance.

The public system explains most of that gap. The University of California and California State University enroll a large share of the state's undergraduates at in-state rates well below private tuition, and CSU remains among the lower-priced four-year options for residents anywhere in the country. UC's Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan covers systemwide tuition for in-state students whose family income falls under a set threshold, and Cal Grant awards extend aid beyond that. California also runs the largest community college system in the U.S., and transfer pathways let students finish a bachelor's degree after two years at a much lower price.

Balances climb in graduate and professional programs. Stanford University, the University of Southern California and the UC law and medical schools graduate classes of borrowers carrying six-figure debt, a pattern common to professional degrees nationally but concentrated here because so many of those programs sit in one state.

Living costs change the arithmetic as well. Cost of attendance includes housing, food and transportation, and a student renting in Los Angeles, San Francisco or San Diego faces expenses that can exceed tuition outright. Borrowers at those campuses often take loans to cover rent rather than instruction, which is why California's figures run higher than its tuition policy alone would predict.

The result is a state that dominates the total-debt rankings and sits in the middle of the per-borrower ones. Its borrowers are numerous rather than unusually indebted. A headline about California's share of national student debt is mostly a statement about how many people live there, not about what the average Californian owes.

Illustration: Quartz

Illinois sits in the upper tier of states for average student loan debt per borrower, and the density of private universities in the Chicago metro area accounts for most of it. Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and Loyola University Chicago all charge private tuition and enroll large cohorts in law, business and medical programs.

Professional degrees move the number more than any other factor. A law or medical graduate leaves with a balance accumulated over three or four years at private rates, stacked on whatever undergraduate debt came before it. Several such programs clustered in one metro area produce a steady annual supply of borrowers in that range. Those balances pull the statewide average up even though they belong to a minority of borrowers.

Public tuition has climbed as well. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the state's other public campuses raised prices over the past two decades as state appropriations per student fell. The budget impasse that left Illinois without a full enacted budget for roughly two years starting in 2015 disrupted payments to public universities. It also interrupted the Monetary Award Program, the state's need-based grant. When grant aid stalls and tuition does not, loans fill the gap.

Illinois also sends a large share of its college-bound high school graduates to schools in other states each year. Lawmakers created the AIM HIGH grant program to slow that outflow by funding public universities to offer merit aid to in-state students. Students who leave often pay out-of-state or private rates elsewhere, then come back to Illinois to work. Their balances land in the state's borrower pool without ever passing through an Illinois public campus.

Housing adds the last layer. A student attending school in Chicago without family nearby borrows against a cost of attendance that includes city rent, transit and food. That is why Illinois borrowers can carry more debt than tuition figures alone would suggest.

Illustration: Quartz

New York's average student loan debt per borrower runs well above the national figure, and the reason is the sheer number of private nonprofit colleges its residents attend rather than any shortage of affordable public options. The state has one of the largest private higher education sectors in the country, and those schools charge several times what SUNY and CUNY do.

Columbia University, New York University and Cornell University anchor that sector, joined by dozens of smaller private liberal arts colleges spread from Long Island through the Hudson Valley and across upstate. Students at those schools face a gap between what grant aid covers and what attendance actually costs, and loans close it. The gap widens for graduate and professional students, since law, business and medical programs at New York's private universities carry tuition that accumulates across several additional years of enrollment.

Living costs account for much of the rest. A student renting in Manhattan, Brooklyn or Queens during school borrows against a cost of attendance that includes housing, food and transportation, not tuition alone. That pushes totals above what the published price of a degree suggests, and it affects graduate students most, because they are less likely to live with family and more likely to be enrolled full time in programs that leave little room for outside work.

The public side of the ledger reads differently. The Excelsior Scholarship, launched in 2017, covers tuition at SUNY and CUNY campuses for eligible students from middle-income households who meet annual credit requirements and agree to live in the state for a set period after graduation. Paired with SUNY and CUNY tuition rates that already sit far below the private market, the program has kept borrowing among public university undergraduates comparatively contained.

What remains is a split average. New York's elevated per-borrower number reflects private college and graduate school borrowers far more than it reflects a typical SUNY undergraduate, the same divide visible in Georgia and Illinois.

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Pennsylvania's elevated average balance comes down to the share of its students who attend schools charging private tuition. The state holds one of the largest collections of private nonprofit colleges in the country, so a larger slice of its borrowers began from a higher sticker price than borrowers in states where public enrollment dominates.

The roster runs from research universities to small residential campuses: the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon University, Villanova University, Drexel University, Duquesne University, Lehigh University, Swarthmore College, Haverford College, Bucknell University and Dickinson College, among dozens more. They sit across the whole state rather than in one metro area, with campuses in Scranton, Allentown, Lancaster and Erie as well as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

The public side offers less of a discount than it does elsewhere. Penn State, Pitt and Temple are state-related rather than state-owned, and their in-state tuition ranks near the top among public flagship institutions nationally. Pennsylvania also sits among the lowest states for appropriations per public university student. That funding gap reaches families as tuition, which borrowers then cover with loans rather than grants.

Pennsylvania's State System of Higher Education — the 10 state-owned universities including West Chester and Kutztown — remains the lower-cost route. It has lost enrollment over the past decade, and in 2022 it merged six campuses into two institutions, PennWest University and Commonwealth University.

Financial strain among the smaller private colleges adds another pressure. Cabrini University in Radnor closed in 2024 after years of enrollment decline. Schools with thin endowments cannot discount tuition as deeply as wealthier peers, so their published price and their net price sit closer together. The practical effect is that the largest aid awards tend to come from the institutions with the biggest endowments, while a small college with a lower listed tuition can leave a graduate with more to finance.