How much debt does the average student graduate with?

As with many other things in life - it depends. It depends on what school you chose to attend, what your grades are, and how aggressive you are in trying to find a way to reduce your total costs. There is a widget on each college's website called Net Price Calculator (NPC) that allows you to enter your data and see how much they expect your family to pay out of pocket or borrow. You run a sample for a few colleges that you are interested in. There is also a website myintuition.org where you can enter your data only once and see the results from all the schools that participate on that website. Even if you are not interested in most of them, you can still get an idea of where you stand financially. You can also save a lot if you go to a local community college for the first two years and then transfer - many colleges offer a guaranteed transfer option for those who fulfill certain requirements.

This REALLY depends on what you're doing. As of the 2018 Forbes report, the average student debt is $38,390, but that's typically based on an undergraduate degree, at a public institution. Private institutions sometimes charge ~$40K + / year, so even if you work through college earning ~20K/year , you'll still leave school with more than double the average figure. Also, it depends on whether you pursue a graduate degree, and what kind. If you go to law school, you're looking at an additional ~120-200K of student loans depending on where you go; med school can be even more costly.

In conclusion, it depends a lot on where you study, what you study, and how long (graduate vs undergraduate) you study, but it's not uncommon to walk away with ~$40,000 worth of student loans.