Scandinavian free colleges are not so free. Some grads have more debt than Americans.

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According to Sen. Sanders, “It is insane and counter-productive to the best interests of our country and our future, that hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades. That shortsighted path to the future must end.”

So Sanders would probably be just as shocked as I was to learn that there is student debt in Scandinavia despite their lack of university tuition, and a lot of it. While tuition is free, room and board are not. Paradoxically, offering free tuition seems to have incentivized students to be more likely to rack up debt by moving out early. While it’s becoming more common for American students to save money by living at home and attending a two-year community college, there’s less incentive to do so with “free” tuition.

In 2015 Swedes who borrowed to attend college had an average $17,266 in debt.

In Norway, the average student graduated with 280,000 NOK in debt in 2016. That amounts to roughly $32,000.
For contrast, the average student debt for someone graduating in America’s class of 2015 was approximately $30,100.

Student debt levels in Norway are on par with America (despite the almost non-existent ROI on a Norwegian college education), and Swedes have roughly half as much debt, but only in nominal terms. Interestingly, while having less debt per-student that takes out debt, a larger percentage of Swedish students have debt than Americans.

In 2004, 85% of Swedish students graduated with debt, compared to 50% of U.S. students. While Swedes have less debt per-capita, the reduced ROI on a Scandinavian college education relative to an American one means that American students graduate with average debt-to-income ratios of 57%, compared to 79% in Sweden.

In other words, relative to income, American students do indeed have less debt than Swedes and Norwegians.

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