Iowa College Aid announced that 126 teachers were offered awards as part of the Iowa Teacher Shortage Loan Forgiveness Program for 2015-16. The average repayment was $5,493, for a total of $692,171. The program, which targets specific subject areas with a shortage of teachers, received 543 applications for the year, a 13 percent increase from the previous year. This year’s recipients have a total of $5,645,740 in outstanding federal student loans, with an average debt of $44,807. The three most common areas where this year’s recipients teach are family and consumer science, industrial technology and foreign languages.