The College Cost Reduction Act would overhaul the Higher Education Act, making changes to student borrowing and repayment, borrower protections, college oversight, postsecondary data, and more. The bill includes a new proposed risk-sharing model that would require colleges to repay the federal government for a calculated proportion of their…

In a 2019 poll conducted by the opinion and market research company SSRS for The Pew Charitable Trusts, 7 in 10 Americans said that taking out a student loan is a reasonable choice given the benefits of a college degree, but 89 percent also expressed concern about people's ability to repay those debts. Research has provided insight into the…

More than a million federal student loan borrowers default each year, and the U.S. Department of Education reports that as of June 2020, roughly 1 in 5 borrowers with federal student loans was in default. Since that time, the coronavirus pandemic and related economic downturn have continued to take a significant toll on households and businesses…

Stranded credit is credit that students have earned at a postsecondary institution, but cannot use or transfer because they have unpaid debts at the institution. Institutions will usually not issue official transcripts to students with debt, which results in the student being unable to formally document the credits they have acquired. This can…

Over the past two decades, educational debt has quickly transformed US colleges and universities into spaces of cruel optimism: the higher education that students desire is all too often an obstacle to their flourishing. This study maps the contours of the white, middle-class attachment to the college dream, paying particular attention to the…

As of March 2019, 43 million Americans held student loans provided through federal government programs, the largest segment of the education loan market. But this system is under pressure as more borrowers struggle to repay, a problem compounded by the complexity of the repayment process. Research on the pathways borrowers take through the…

Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) conducted original research on an often-overlooked group of students--parents with children--as they struggle to make ends meet while pursuing academic degrees and certificates. Student parents often face enormous financial barriers to academic success. They report high financial insecurity including…

Recent efforts to understand aggregate student loan debt have shifted the focus away from undergraduate borrowing and toward dramatically rising debt among graduate and professional students. We suggest educational debt plays a key role in social stratification by deterring bachelor's degree holders from disadvantaged and underrepresented…

This article explores the black box of college adaptation and social integration of low SES students entering higher education under a forgivable loans program. It does so by studying a context of extreme educational and economic inequality. The magnitude of this study offers an unprecedented window to observe interactions between different social…

Researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill teamed up with UnidosUS to explore whether and how our debt-driven higher education system makes it difficult for students to finish a college program or degree. The quantitative research, gathered from more than 1,500 respondents from across the country, offers insight into the primary…

This study examined the education-related debt, sources of debt, and the process of acquiring accommodations for students with non-apparent (such as learning disabilities and mental health disabilities) and apparent disabilities in Canadian postsecondary education. A third group emerged during analyses, students with medical disabilities, which…