Yet another study has been released that will provide scant comfort to those college applicants, and their parents, who intend to take out loans to pay for their education.

Students who graduated from college in 2008 with loans carried an average debt of $23,200 — an increase of nearly 25 percent, or $4,550, when compared with those who graduated just four years earlier. These figures appear in the latest study by the Project on Student Debt, an initiative of the Institute for College Access and Success, a nonprofit organization.

The report also notes that “employment prospects for young college graduates have soured along with the economy.” Citing unpublished data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the researchers report that the unemployment rate for college graduates between the ages of 20 and 24 was 7.6 percent in the third quarter of 2008, “the highest third-quarter rate since 2002.” By the third quarter of this year it was 10.6 percent, “the highest on record.”

The project’s Web site has broken down the average student debt data by state, in an easy-to-navigate map. It shows the District of Columbia ($29,793), Iowa ($28,174) and Connecticut ($26,138) as having college graduates with the highest debt. Utah ($13,041) and Hawaii ($15,156) have the lowest.

（www.eduwo.com, Anna）