Here's how to reduce your student loan debt — while still in college

Anxiety about debt is the top worry of college students as well as for parents preparing to send a kid off to college. But guess what? The average that families spent on college actually went down last year.

Sallie Mae's report How America Pays for College 2016 found that the average U.S. family spent $23,688 for college in the 2015-16 academic year, down from $24,164 in 2014-15.

Still, though, that slight drop hasn't done much to reverse the trend of college costs increasing, especially for private universities. Sallie Mae's report also found that private universities were astronomically more expensive than public ones.