It’s back-to-school season — and that means that some bright-eyed college freshmen and their proud families are getting ready to shell out six figures to attend their dream schools.
Tuition prices have soared in recent decades, even as Americans have grown more skeptical of the value of a four-year degree.
Still, there’s a significant number of young adults in college. In 2024, 19.28 million students were enrolled in college, down from the peak of 21 million in 2010, per the Education Data Initiative.
For some of those students, pursuing a degree was only possible by taking out loans, either federal or private.
Business Insider used the Department of Education’s College Scorecard to identify the 25 universities whose students graduate with the highest median federal debt.
For the ranking, we considered main campuses with at least 500 undergraduate students that predominantly offer bachelor’s degrees. The DOE does not track private loans or federal Parent PLUS loans, so this ranking does not reflect all the debt students and their families may take on to pay for university.
The list includes public, private nonprofit, for-profit, and primarily online institutions.
One major trend stood out: A majority of the top 25 colleges — 56% — are historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
HBCU students borrow at a higher rate than non-HBCU students, and they tend to borrow more, according to UNCF, which has linked this higher borrowing to greater “unmet financial need” among HBCU students.
Marybeth Gasman, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions, told Business Insider that HBCUs often have fewer resources to offer institutional aid.
“They have lower endowments and smaller operating budgets than many comparable PWIs (predominantly white institutions),” she said.
“It is important that students take out the least amount of aid, but that can be difficult when people have needs,” she said, adding that some students also take out loans to support their families.
With that context in mind, here are the 25 US universities where students graduate with the highest median federal debt.
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