Average debt: $29,456
Students with debt: 71 percent
Graceland University seniors who graduated in 2012 also finished school with a debt load nearly $10,000 more than the statewide average for Iowa. Most of those students – approximately 85 percent of the graduating class _walked away with some amount of debt.
Iowa’s overall debt level was nearly $1,000 below the rate for seniors at Iowa State University, which averaged $30,374. Two other public schools – the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa – reported average student debt lower than the state as a whole that year.