The headlines of 2008 were dominated by falling housing prices, rising default and foreclosure rates, failure of large investment banks, and huge bailouts arranged by both the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury. The wealth of many Americans has been substantially reduced and concern about a lengthy and severe recession is now widespread. All of…

Typically, efforts made by colleges and universities to provide more accountability are linked to having institutions provide more information and make their processes more transparent to their various stakeholders. One way in which public institutions can reasonably be held accountable is to rely to a large extent on the relationship they have…

Student loans schemes are in operation in more than seventy countries around the world. Most loans schemes benefit from sizeable built-in government subsidies and, in addition, are subject to repayment default and administrative costs that are not passed on to student borrowers. We probe two issues in this paper, for 44 loans schemes in 39…

Low Income;This article examines instances of housing discrimination against Latinos in the Chicago suburbs through several interviews with thirty-four Latino families who live in towns with a recent history of controversies around fair housing. Whether they are living in the central city or in the suburbs, Latinos continue to experience housing…

The lack of industry wide data on homeownership education and counseling (HEC) programs has severely limited evaluation. In particular, very little evidence exists on the relationship between HEC completion and loan prepayment, an outcome of interest to both mortgage lenders and consumer advocates. Where mortgage prepayment directly influences the…

College student debt and loan default are growing concerns in the United States. For each U.S. institution, the federal government is now reporting a cohort default rate, which is the percent of students who defaulted on their loan, averaged over a three-year period. Previous studies have amply shown that student characteristics are strongly…

The rate at which borrowers default on their federally guaranteed student loans has declined to 4.6 percent, in part because of a record number of consolidations, the Education Department announced last week. "Borrowers took advantage of the opportunity to lock in record-low interest rates by consolidating their federal student loans," the…

Federal higher education policy has shifted over the past few decades from grants to loans as the primary means for providing access to postsecondary education for low- and moderate-income families. With this shift, policy makers have begun tracking student loan default rates as a key indicator of the efficacy of student loan programs. This effort…

Reviews tips from financial aid programs aimed at reducing default on student loans. Tips include: know your students, target your efforts, help students stay in school, give students appropriate information during "learning moments," and make information easy to get and understand. Includes lists of other resources. (EV)

In 1987-88 large farms (annual sales over $40,000) had loan default and insolvency rates 2.5-3 times greater than small farms. Small farm solvency was related to income stability associated with off-farm employment, and decreased in areas with fewer off-farm employment opportunities. (SV)

Federal data on student-loan defaults in colleges, universities, and vocational-technical schools include number and proportion of borrowers in default on Stafford Loans and Supplemental Loans in fiscal 1988 and 1989. The data are used to exclude high-default institutions from federal programs. Dollar amounts of loans defaulted are not presented.…

Provides a model of student loan defaults using a panel data file. Identifies a variety of individual variables associated with loan defaults; however, researchers found that the variable with the largest effect on default is continuous enrollment. Students who are continuously enrolled or complete their programs are far less likely to default…

In most cases, individuals filing for bankruptcy to discharge student loans are those who encountered difficult life circumstances, not middle-class college graduates who refused to pay for their education. Many courts have interpreted the Bankruptcy Code's "undue hardship" provisions too harshly and without compassion. (70 footnotes)…

Linked a database of California student borrowers with background financial and demographic information and post-college employment data to examine factors that predict default for borrowers in the federal Family Education Loan program. Found that background demographic and financial characteristics, leaving school without a degree, having low…

Attempted to replicate and extend the findings of earlier Student Loan Recipient Survey of the 1987 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:87) on student loan defaults. Analysis of 1,117 borrowers from 510 institutions indicated that besides certain precollege traits and high grade point averages, postcollege employment congruent with the…