I believe the Canadian number is the average across all students. The American article breaks things up more: + 66 percent of graduates from public colleges ha

I believe the Canadian number is the average across all students. The American article breaks things up more: + 66 percent of graduates from public colleges had loans (average debt of $25,550) + 75 percent of graduates from private nonprofit colleges had loans (average debt of $32,300) + 88 percent of graduates from for-profit colleges had loans (average debt of $39,950) + MBA = $42,000 (11% of graduate degrees) + Master of Education = $50,879 (16%) + Master of Science = $50,400 (18%) + Master of Arts = $58,539 (8%) + Law = $140,616 (4%) + Medicine and health sciences = $161,772 (5%) This is a highly skewed distribution (would be in Canada too, but all values would be lower). Graduate school in the USA is significantly more expensive than in Canada. The average of the Canadian distribution across all majors + graduate programs is going to make the difference between the two nations seem much smaller than it really is. The Canadian report has no such breakdown unfortunately (though see the average debt levels on page 40 of this http://www.cusc-ccreu.ca/CUSC_2015_Graduating_Master%20Report_English.pdf http://www.cusc-ccreu.ca/CUSC_2015_Graduating_Master%20Repor...).