NZUSA on Student Debt

The Press reports NZUSA has released a survey by TNS which says average student debt has risen by 54% since 2004 and was now $28,838.

However the official report on the student loan scheme to 30 June 2007, has the average loan balance as being just $16,833 and the median balance $11,087.

And if one looks at what the median balance was upon leaving study, it was around $13,000 for males and almost $12,000 for females.

In fact only 15.6% of borrowers have a loan balance of over $30,000.

So how do you explain the difference?  Well the NZUSA study isn’t of debt through the student loan scheme – as most would assume, but of all estimated borrowings including loans from parents.

So if the average debt is $16,800 (and is probably less for the average student because many students are only one or two years into their study), then the NZUSA study is saying private borrowing on average is $12,000.

What would be useful would be for NZUSA to put the full survey results on its website (not even the PR is there) so one can see the breakdown of how much of the alleged $28,000 average debt is student loan scheme debt and private debt, and this would allow us to compare the student loan component to the official stats.