It pays to go to school, but to go to school you've got to pay — sometimes an arm and a leg.

A new report by LendEDU showed the majority of students who attend a four-year college in the U.S. graduated with an average of tens of thousands of dollars in debt, a trend that's worsening.

LendEDU, an online marketplace for student loans and refinancing, gathered data provided by 1,161 institutions in the Peterson's Annual Survey of Undergraduate Financial Aid, which included information about college-administered financial aid sources for undergraduate students. It compiled the data into the School Loan Debt by School by State Report, which found in 2016, 59.8 percent of students at nonprofit, four-year public and private institutions graduated in debt.

The average graduate in the class of 2016 had $17,112 in student debt, a 6.7 percent increase from 2015 grads.

The average debt per Idaho borrower in 2016 was $26,980, which is actually a 4 percent decrease. However, as the average amount of debt decreases, the number of students graduating with debt rises. In 2016, 66 percent of Idaho graduates finished school in debt, compared to 65 percent the previous year.

The amount of debt students accrue in college started gaining speed in the 1990s when administrative payrolls expanded, and it hasn't slowed down since, numerous sources have concluded. Social and other services bear some of the blame, said state Sen. Bob Nonini, a Coeur d'Alene Republican.

“The health and welfare budget has increased, the prison budgets have increased, and those have been frustrations of mine,” said Nonini. “If we could spend more money in the education arena so we would have less people on welfare, or less people in prisons because they were able to get a good education, then maybe they wouldn't turn to crime or wouldn't be on welfare.”

As part of the Governor's Higher Education Task Force, Nonini wants to get 60 percent of Idaho high school grads to enroll in some level of post-secondary education by 2020. Associate's degrees and certifications seem more appealing since a bachelor's at an in-state public university costs one-year's salary for many households.

But Dan Davenport, director of student financial aid services at the University of Idaho, thinks it's worth the investment.

“I tell students, really, they're like a stock; we're all investing in them and if they work hard and get their degree, they're going to pay off like a stock,” he said. “And borrowing money to invest in your future can be a very smart financial decision to make.”

University of Idaho costs for tuition and fees increased for in-state and out-of-state students this past year. The average debt per borrower decreased by $297 in 2016, but 64 percent of grads completed school with debt, compared to 58 percent in 2015.

Blake Youde, spokesperson for the Idaho State Board of Education, theorized that more students going to college means more debt.

“We've seen a little bit of an uptick in enrollment at our institutions,” Youde said. “We've seen improvement in the graduation rates of our institutions and that causes the number of students with debt to increase as well.”

Davenport said parents and students are just starting to get it.

“You could just have more students graduating with debt, but they're not borrowing as much, therefore your total debt is not going to be as much,” Davenport said. “I think students and parents are becoming better at looking at what debt load they want to take on as far as student loans.”

LendEDU built the report with the intention of shedding light on the $1.4 trillion student loan crisis. The report ranked schools and states by highest and lowest amounts of debt per borrower. Idaho ranked 31 out 51 states and DC for highest debt per borrower. Northwest Nazarene University was named the Idaho school with the highest debt per borrower at $31,318. The College of Idaho had the lowest, with an average $7,270 of debt per borrower.

The school with the highest debt per borrower nationally was Rose-Hullman Institute of Technology with $59,113 of debt, and the lowest was Newman University with $3,809 of debt per borrower. Pennsylvania sat at the top of the list for states with the highest debt per borrower ($35,185), and Utah sat at the bottom ($18,810).

To view the LendEDU report, visit:

https://lendedu.com/blog/student-loan-debt-statistics-by-school-by-state-2017