text: The report came a day after the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that it would regulate large loan servicers like Sallie Mae — companies that do not lend the money in the first place, but take over the management of the loans — in the $1.2 trillion student debt market. The federal bureau, created after the 2008 financial crisis, already oversees lenders, but it recently reported that people with student debts are often tripped up by the loan servicers, particularly when they seek to change repayment terms. 
   
   The Institute for College Access and Success estimated that of the students who earned bachelor’s degrees in the United States in 2011-12, 71 percent had student loans, and the average borrower had $29,400 in debt, compared with 68 percent and $23,450 four years earlier. The group derived the figures from an annual survey of more than 1,000 colleges and a federal government survey of former students conducted every four years. 
   
   The numbers are skewed somewhat by for-profit colleges, which award about 6 percent of bachelor’s degrees, and where students are much more likely to borrow money, and borrow far more on average. Excluding for-profit schools, the institute reported that 68 percent of graduates had student debt, averaging $27,850; a recent report by the College Board, using different methodology, put those figures at 60 percent and $26,500. 
   
   The institute’s report lists some of the colleges where students borrow the most and the least, based on the college survey, but cautions that some colleges that did not take part in the survey might have made those rosters. Nearly all for-profit colleges did not take part. The high-debt private colleges listed are concentrated in the Northeast, while half of the high-debt public colleges are state schools in Pennsylvania or New Jersey. 
   
   The institute also posted college-specific figures on Wednesday in a searchable online database. It shows two private colleges, Anna Maria College and Wheelock College, both in Massachusetts, with more than 80 percent of graduates having student loans, and the highest average debt per borrower, around $49,000, among colleges that provided figures. At two other private schools, Becker College in Massachusetts and Marylhurst University in Oregon, average debt was a few thousand dollars lower, but there were more borrowers — more than 90 percent of their graduates had debts. ||||| Antwan Williams, a senior at Roosevelt High School, fills out a college enrollment application at his school in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2013. The schools was hosting a "sit-in" to get high school students who might not otherwise go to college to apply. (Photo: Susan Walsh, AP) Story Highlights That's up from the $26,600 debt held by 2011 graduates 
   
   Rising tuition, stagnant family incomes contribute to need to borrow 
   
   Students from Delaware graduated with the highest average debt 
   
   The average student debt load continues to rise as new data show the Class of 2012 graduated college with an average debt of close to $30,000. 
   
   The $29,400 last year's graduates hold in student loans is up from an average debt load of $26,600 held by 2011 graduates, according to an annual report from the Project on Student Debt at The Institute for College Access and Success. 
   
   While colleges are raising tuition, families' incomes are still suffering from the effects of the recession and remain flat — both factors are increasing students' need to borrow to attend school, says Debbie Cochrane, research director at The Institute for College Access and Success. 
   
   "Rising tuition and high tuition are certainly a contributor to increasing student debt, but it's far from the full picture," she says. "Family incomes and families' own ability to contribute to college costs has just been stagnant." 
   
   Sallie Mae's "How America Pays for College" study out earlier this year found parents' income and savings are covering 27% of college costs, compared with 37% in 2010. 
   
   "The post-recession reality is (parents) don't have the income and savings," Sarah Ducich, senior vice president of public policy at Sallie Mae, told USA TODAY in July. "It's not that they're not willing to stretch. It's that they don't think they have the money to do that." 
   
   Plus, many graduates are still having difficulty finding jobs that pay enough to cover student loan payments, Cochrane says. 
   
   "The down economy has really been a double-edged sword in many ways because (students) and their parents have fewer resources to pay for college costs, which may lead them to take on more debt," she says. "And then they're entering a down economy where it's hard to find a good job that allows them to repay the debt." 
   
   This year's Project on Student Debt numbers include data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, which comes out every four years. It gives a more comprehensive picture of student debt, because it includes debt loads for students who went to for-profit colleges, where more students often graduate with debt and graduate with higher debt, Cochrane says. 
   
   To provide individual state and college data, The Project on Student Debt also collects data from colleges that volunteer the information, and few for-profit colleges participate, Cochrane says. 
   
   Students from Delaware graduated with the most debt — an average of $33,649 — while students in South Dakota were the most likely to graduate with debt, at 78% of graduates, the data show. South Dakota's average debt is $25,121. 
   
   While most students take out federal loans, a fifth hold private loans, the data show. Private loans have been known to be more difficult for borrowers to manage and have less flexible repayment plans. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's annual student loan ombudsman report out in October reported that students with private student loans in particular have difficulty enrolling in alternative repayment plans; private loan servicers also often allocate payments to maximize late fees and pay off low-interest loans first rather than costlier high-interest loans. 
   
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target: – The class of 2012 entered a tough jobs market buckling under an average debt load of $29,400, according to the annual report from the Institute for College Access and Success. That's up from an average $26,600 in 2011, and the rise can be blamed on rising tuition fees combined with stagnant family incomes. The struggling economy is a "double-edged sword in many ways because (students) and their parents have fewer resources to pay for college costs, which may lead them to take on more debt," the institute's research director tells USA Today. "And then they're entering a down economy where it's hard to find a good job that allows them to repay the debt." A recent study found that parents now cover an average 27% of college costs, down from 37% just three years ago. The institute's report, however, found huge variation in the debt loads from state to state and college to college, with graduates at some institutions carrying an average of $50,000 in debt while others had an average less than a tenth of that, the New York Times reports. Student debt tended to be highest in Eastern states, with Delaware grads the most indebted at an average of $34,000 each. New Mexico graduates had the lowest debt; an average of $18,000. But the class of 2012 isn't the most indebted graduating class in history: That dubious honor goes to the class of 2013.