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Of the nearly 70 percent of U.S. graduates who are forced to take out a loan to pay for colllege, the burden continues to grow by leaps and bounds. When will students rise up? (Graphic: TICAS)

Latest figures shows that today’s college graduates are being saddled with the burden of increasingly high student loan debt as they begin careers or start families. But isn’t there a better way to finance higher-education? (Hint: The answer is ‘Yes.’) 

When will students and recent college graduates shake off the burden of increasingly higher student debt and demand a system that serves them instead of making them servants?

The amount of personal debt being accrued by college students in the nation’s private and public colleges continues to rise at shocking rates with current graduates of four-year schools exiting with a national average of nearly $30,000 in loans to repay, according to a new report released Thursday.

Using available data from private non-profit and public schools in all fifty states for the 2013 academic year, the Project on Student Debt at The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) found that the level of debt varies from state to state, but that of the nearly 70 percent of graduates who take out a loan to pay for colllege, the burden continues to grow.  According to the report (pdf), the average bachelor-degree graduate-along with a diploma of increasingly questionable value- leaves school with and an average of $28,400 in personal debt. That number is a full 2 percent increase over 2012.

Notably, for-profit colleges-which have been widely criticized for burdening vulnerable students with out-sized private debt-were not included in the TICAS report because those schools nearly universally decline to share their student loan and debt figures with the public.

Among the schools that were covered, however, there was clear variation in the level of student debt depending on the college itself and its geographic location.

At nearly 20 percent of colleges, the report showed, average debt levels for students increased by 10 percent or more over the previous year. As in 2012, about 20 percent of all new graduates’ debt was in private loans, which are typically more costly and provide far fewer consumer protections and repayment options than safer federal student loans. The rate of debt also varied between states. “At the state level,” the report reads, “borrowers’ average debt at graduation ranges from $18,656 to $32,795, with six states topping $30,000 and only one under $20,000. Nearly all the highest debt states are in the Northeast and Midwest, with the lowest debt states in the West and South.”