Student Loan Debt Statistics

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Americans owe $1.84 trillion in student loan debt. This student loan debt statistics page delves deeply into the burdens borrowers face. Continue reading for more details.

Key student loan debt statistics

Americans owe $1.84 trillion in federal and private student loan debt as of the fourth quarter of 2025. That’s up 3.2% from the fourth quarter of 2024. Through September 2025, $140.38 billion of that total is private student loan debt.
Students and parents borrowed an estimated $102.6 billion in the 2024-25 academic year. Of these loans, 44% were federal unsubsidized loans, 15% were federal subsidized loans, 15% were Grad PLUS loans, 14% were private or other nonfederal loans and 12% were Parent PLUS loans.
47% of the class of 2024 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 $29,560 in federal and private student loan debt. Those who graduated from private nonprofits had an average of $34,420 in debt, while those from public colleges had an average of $27,420 in debt. Private school graduates were more likely to leave school with debt than public school graduates — 49% versus 47%.
44.6 million borrowers have federal student debt as of the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. That’s down from 45.2 million as of the second quarter of fiscal year 2024.
9.57% of student loans are 90 days or more delinquent as of the fourth quarter of 2025. That’s up significantly from 0.53% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and 6.45% in the fourth quarter of 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Historic look at federal and private student loan debt

Quarter	Total debt (in millions)
2025 Q4	$1,835,575.83
2025 Q3	$1,832,977.54
2025 Q2	$1,802,607.02
2025 Q1	$1,805,464.60
2024 Q4	$1,778,376.73
2024 Q3	$1,772,891.41
2024 Q2	$1,741,137.84
2024 Q1	$1,753,333.67
2023 Q4	$1,729,139.13
2023 Q3	$1,732,575.35
2023 Q2	$1,761,243.56
2023 Q1	$1,774,909.90
2022 Q4	$1,764,067.41
2022 Q3	$1,761,742.00
2022 Q2	$1,744,007.00
2022 Q1	$1,747,455.51
2021 Q4	$1,733,415.19
2021 Q3	$1,739,443.83
2021 Q2	$1,719,067.50
2021 Q1	$1,718,706.55
2020 Q4	$1,693,860.24
2020 Q3	$1,696,474.62
2020 Q2	$1,672,503.14
2020 Q1	$1,671,968.77
2019 Q4	$1,637,880.70
2019 Q3	$1,635,131.97
2019 Q2	$1,603,292.90
2019 Q1	$1,597,654.08
2018 Q4	$1,566,903.43
2018 Q3	$1,560,681.66
2018 Q2	$1,530,756.57
2018 Q1	$1,523,343.76
2017 Q4	$1,488,895.48
2017 Q3	$1,479,029.56
2017 Q2	$1,446,680.08
2017 Q1	$1,440,358.57
2016 Q4	$1,405,332.16
2016 Q3	$1,398,573.20
2016 Q2	$1,365,269.83
2016 Q1	$1,358,137.44
2015 Q4	$1,320,248.14
2015 Q3	$1,311,766.42
2015 Q2	$1,278,764.92
2015 Q1	$1,271,844.96
2014 Q4	$1,235,751.47
2014 Q3	$1,226,394.05
2014 Q2	$1,190,488.72
2014 Q1	$1,182,061.19
2013 Q4	$1,145,550.76
2013 Q3	$1,134,180.97
2013 Q2	$1,099,606.80
2013 Q1	$1,092,013.86
2012 Q4	$1,054,565.11
2012 Q3	$1,041,034.04
2012 Q2	$1,011,259.93
2012 Q1	$994,279.74
2011 Q4	$959,823.95
2011 Q3	$940,339.02
2011 Q2	$905,157.15
2011 Q1	$896,848.43
2010 Q4	$855,483.42
2010 Q3	$845,804.79
2010 Q2	$811,148.77
2010 Q1	$800,069.82
2009 Q4	$771,699.74
2009 Q3	$746,522.52
2009 Q2	$712,319.15
2009 Q1	$707,226.80
2008 Q4	$675,952.58
2008 Q3	$660,584.20
2008 Q2	$626,605.61
2008 Q1	$619,315.89
2007 Q4	$589,489.28
2007 Q3	$577,380.56
2007 Q2	$549,270.83
2007 Q1	$544,988.55
2006 Q4	$521,382.49
2006 Q3	$510,548.46
2006 Q2	$487,126.04
2006 Q1	$480,966.98

Source: Federal Reserve.

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 fourth fiscal quarter of 2025 (except for the servicer information, which is updated as of September 2025).

Federal student loan debt statistics by loan program

Loan program	Dollars outstanding	Recipients
Direct loans	$1,529.1 billion	38.6 million borrowers
FFEL loans	$160.7 billion	6.8 million borrowers
Perkins loans	$2.8 billion	0.9 million borrowers
Total (all federal)	$1,692.6 billion	42.8 million unduplicated borrowers

Federal student loan debt statistics by loan type

Loan type	Dollars outstanding	Recipients
Stafford subsidized	$298.5 billion	30.3 million borrowers
Stafford unsubsidized	$627.9 billion	31.3 million borrowers
Stafford combined	$926.4 billion	35.3 million unique recipients
Grad PLUS	$124.1 billion	1.9 million borrowers
Parent PLUS	$116.0 billion	3.6 million borrowers
Perkins	$2.8 billion	0.9 million borrowers
Consolidation	$523.6 billion	9.2 million borrowers

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

Loan status	Dollars outstanding	Recipients
Loans in repayment	$606.0 billion	18.5 million borrowers
Loans in deferment	$145.7 billion	3.5 million borrowers
Loans in forbearance	$531.8 billion	9.7 million borrowers
Loans in default (cumulative)	$83.1 billion	3.7 million borrowers
Loans in grace period	$41.0 billion	1.6 million borrowers

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

Repayment plan	Dollars outstanding	Recipients
Level repayment plan (10 years or less)	$312.3 billion	14.17 million borrowers
Level repayment plan (greater than 10 years)	$94.9 billion	1.77 million borrowers
Graduated repayment plan (10 years or less)	$69.6 billion	2.4 million borrowers
Graduated repayment plan (greater than 10 years)	$37.4 billion	0.67 million borrowers
Income-contingent (ICR)	$55.6 billion	1.31 million borrowers
Income-based (IBR)	$156.4 billion	2.46 million borrowers
Pay As You Earn (PAYE)	$114.9 billion	1.46 million borrowers
SAVE	$410.0 billion	7.43 million borrowers
Alternative	$21.9 billion	0.67 million borrowers

Federal student loan debt by servicer

	Repayment		Deferment		Forbearance		In-school		Grace
	Outstanding (billions)	Recipients (millions)	Outstanding (billions)	Recipients (millions)	Outstanding (billions)	Recipients (millions)	Outstanding (billions)	Recipients (millions)	Outstanding (billions)	Recipients (millions)
Nelnet	$221.1	6.4	$48.9	1.2	$188.6	3.6	$32.9	1.8	$11.9	0.5
Aidvantage	$182.7	5.6	$37.7	0.9	$124.9	2.3	$26.5	1.5	$9.1	0.4
MOHELA	$106.0	3.2	$28.9	0.7	$156.7	2.1	$21.7	1.0	$8.3	0.3
EdFinancial	$96.6	3.5	$25.1	0.7	$66.0	1.5	$25.4	1.3	$11.1	0.4
CRI	$28.4	1.4	$7.5	0.3	$8.4	0.4	$7.0	0.8	$0.7	0.1

Source: Federal Student Aid.

Federal, 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 400,000 LendingTree users in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Average student loan debt by state

Rank	State	Avg.
1	District of Columbia	$70,450
2	Hawaii	$60,407
3	Maryland	$59,586
4	New Jersey	$56,680
5	Georgia	$55,350
6	Illinois	$54,968
7	California	$54,857
8	Delaware	$54,169
9	New York	$53,722
10	Mississippi	$52,791
11	Connecticut	$52,651
12	South Carolina	$52,508
13	Vermont	$52,271
14	Oregon	$51,951
14	Virginia	$51,951
16	Pennsylvania	$51,354
17	Washington	$51,336
18	Florida	$50,481
19	North Carolina	$50,129
20	Colorado	$49,650
21	Alabama	$49,314
22	Maine	$49,047
23	West Virginia	$48,839
24	Arizona	$48,336
25	Massachusetts	$48,274
26	New Hampshire	$47,563
27	Texas	$47,227
28	Michigan	$46,934
29	Tennessee	$46,769
30	Ohio	$46,748
31	Indiana	$46,659
32	Nevada	$46,486
33	New Mexico	$46,431
34	Oklahoma	$45,732
35	Minnesota	$45,637
36	Montana	$45,336
37	Wisconsin	$44,964
38	Rhode Island	$44,794
39	Alaska	$44,472
40	Louisiana	$44,298
41	Nebraska	$44,114
42	Kentucky	$44,078
43	Missouri	$43,855
44	Kansas	$43,814
45	Idaho	$43,232
46	Utah	$42,811
47	South Dakota	$42,620
48	Iowa	$41,266
49	Arkansas	$41,012
50	Wyoming	$40,868
51	North Dakota	$40,354

Source: Analysis of anonymized credit reports of more than 400,000 LendingTree users in the fourth quarter of 2025. Note: Includes federal and private student loans.

Private student loan debt statistics

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

Americans owe an estimated $140.38 billion to private student lenders through September 2025. This accounts for an estimated 7.7% of total outstanding federal and private student loan debt.
16 contributors to the Enterval Analytics Private Student Loan Report — Citizens Bank, Navient, PNC Bank, Sallie Mae Bank, SoFi, College Ave, Navy Federal Credit Union and nine members from the Education Finance Council — account for 78.2% of outstanding private student loan debt.
Undergraduate loans account for 89.8% and graduate loans account for 10.2% of the outstanding balance held by those 16 contributors.
Among the private student loans held by those contributors as of the end of the third quarter of 2025, 73.9% are in repayment, 19.0% are in deferment, 5.7% are in a grace period and 1.5% are in forbearance.
1.7% of private student loans are 90 days or more delinquent as of the third quarter of 2025, up from 1.6% in the previous year.
96.7% of undergraduate and 74.2% of graduate private loans were cosigned during the 2025-26 academic year.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness statistics

Here’s the latest on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.

The Federal Student Aid data here is through September 2025 — 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: 2,583,200
Total combined PSLF forms submitted: 3,276,900, with 1,008,600 closed or canceled forms
Unique borrowers granted combined PSLF (PSLF, TEPSLF and waiver): 1,183,600 (versus 1,155,400 through July 2025)
Average balance forgiven (PSLF, TEPSLF and waiver): $74,100 (versus $74,000 through July 2025)

Sources

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Historic look at federal and private student loan debt
Federal student loan portfolio
Federal, private student loan debt by state
Private student loan debt statistics
Public Service Loan Forgiveness statistics
Sources