STICKER SHOCK. Georgia’s HOPE scholarship is one of the most widely successful — and copied — student aid programs in the country. But more than 30 years after its creation, Georgia students have the second-highest student loan balance of any state in the nation, according to data from the Federal Reserve.

That contrast is why state senators are holding hearings during the legislative off season to study higher education affordability. Lawmakers on Monday heard that Georgia has more than 1.6 million total student loan borrowers with a balance of $69.83 billion — an average of $43,200 per person.

But state Sen. Max Burns, a Republican from Sylvania and chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, said it’s not fair to lump all student loan debt together. He said there’s a big difference between the cost of a graduate degree at a medical or law school and an undergraduate degree at a four-year college or university.

“If we lump it all into one bucket it might provide a different perception than if we parsed it into more appropriate subsets,” he said.

MJ Kim, a senior analyst at the Southern Regional Education Board, called it “a promising sign” that borrowing in Georgia declined at a slightly faster rate than the national average.

But she said the average student loan for a four-year degree still exceeds $20,000.