About the Data 

The student debt data used in Student Debt and the Class of 2007 are reported by institutions in response to a survey conducted by Peterson's using questions from the Common Data Set (CDS). This data is collected under CDS questions H4 and H5. All federal and private student loans taken out by graduating seniors while they attended that institution are included. Prior borrowing by students who transfer is not included, meaning that actual debt levels would be higher. Starting with the class of 2006, the CDS instructs institutions to exclude students who transferred in from the debt calculations entirely. Actual debt may also be higher due to private (or "alternative") loans taken out by the students but not handled by the campus financial aid office (and therefore not in their records).

Only institutions reporting average debt figures for 2006 and 2007 are included in the state averages. Those missing this data for either year are excluded. Institutions reporting zero average debt but a positive percentage with debt (or vice versa) are also excluded. The averages are weighted according to enrollment (full-time Fall term 2006) and the proportion of graduating seniors with debt. In cases where the campus reported average debt but did not report a proportion with debt, the national average of 58.6 percent was used.

The list of schools on the web site and the tuition and enrollment figures are from the U.S. Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data for 2006-­07. The percentage of Pell Grant recipients in 2006-07 is from economicdiversity.org and is derived from U.S. Department of Education sources.

The methodology used in this report differs slightly from that used in the reports "State Debt and the Class of 2005" and  "State Debt and the Class of 2006" and therefore the results reported are not directly comparable.

The Institute for College Access & Success, the sponsor of the Project on Student Debt and economicdiversity.org, has licensed the debt data through an agreement with Peterson's. The data are copyright © 2007, 2008 Peterson's, a Nelnet company. All rights reserved.

The Institute also licensed data from Wintergreen Orchard House, which was used during our analyses for comparison. Wintergreen Orchard House uses the same survey data source used by U.S. News and World Report for its annual report on "America's Best Colleges." That data is copyrighted material under license to Wintergreen Orchard House, a division of Alloy Education, and which is reproduced in this publication by permission of Wintergreen Orchard House. Copyright © 2006, 2007 by Wintergreen Orchard House. All rights reserved.