College graduates from the state of Iowa have an unfavorable distinction – higher debt.

Sixty-eight percent of ISU students graduate with an average debt of more than $27,000, according to a study published by U.S. News and World Report 2006 Edition of America’s Best Colleges. It’s a tune few ISU students are happily moving their feet to.

“It’s stressful,” said Ryan Meeker, junior in sociology. “It’s going to affect my ability to pull out loans for a house or a car after I graduate.”

Meeker is certain he will have incurred more than $20,000 in debt by the time he graduates. He said it’s the wrong thing to be certain about.

“In my major, it’s sometimes kind of difficult to find a job after school,” Meeker said.

Concerns from students such as Meeker beg the question of why ISU students graduate with more debt, although ISU tuition is lower than that of its peer land-grant universities.

Roberta Johnson, director of the Office of Student Financial Aid, had some answers.

“First of all, Iowa State students have incurred several years of double-digit tuition increases. This past year, it was only 4 percent. And for next year, it is scheduled to be only 4 percent, but prior to that, we had some years with 18 percent tuition increases, and so that was very difficult for students,” Johnson said.

These tuition increases were not matched by increases in federal financial aid.

“The Pell Grant didn’t increase. Supplemental grants did not increase. Those didn’t change at all, so students had to utilize loan programs to make up the difference in order to cover their tuition,” Johnson said.

Another reason goes back to a push that began in 1997 encouraging students to apply for the Iowa Partnership Loan program.

“For a number of years, Iowa State was actively telling families about a loan program where the student could borrow money as opposed to the parents having to borrow money to fund the student’s education,” Johnson said. “We found that a lot of parents ended up doing that. They ended up encouraging the student to take out the debt rather than the parent taking on the debt or coming up with the resources to pay for their student’s education.”

She said it was a popular loan program because the terms and conditions were better than the parent loan program.

“Now that loan program are not quite as attractive, we are first encouraging parents to borrow the money because the parent loan program is more attractive,” Johnson said.

She also explained that Iowa could be lagging behind other states in state financial aid programs.

“In Illinois, they give some grant money to students who are very poor to help them to fund some of their educational costs so those students don’t have to borrow money. We have no such program similar to that here in the state of Iowa,” Johnson said.

She also said the state of Colorado offers students a $2,000 grant as long as they go to certain schools within the state of Colorado.

“We don’t have a similar program quite like that,” Johnson said. “So when you compare us to certain schools across the nation, you really have to start looking to find out whether there are also state-specific programs that are also helping to provide financial aid dollars for students.”

These reasons did not calm down the concerns of Randall Scheiner, who was at the library on Monday. Scheiner, senior in animal ecology, has already incurred more than $40,000 in debt.

“I will probably be paying it back when I am 50 or 60, but I wanted a better education. I figured it will pay itself off eventually,” Scheiner said.

The attitude of Scheiner sums up the frame of mind of many students who, after graduating, will be thrust into the real world, facing many responsibilities – including the prospect of having to pay back college loans.