This study updates and expands the literature on student loan default. By applying multilevel regression to the Beginning Postsecondary Students survey, four key findings emerge. First, attending proprietary institutions is strongly associated with default, even after accounting for students' socioeconomic and academic backgrounds. Second,…

Americans are concerned about the cost of a college education and the impact of student loan debt, particularly in difficult economic times. They want a high-quality education, and they want it to be affordable. This two-page brief on student debt is intended to provide context for the conversation about this important issue, particularly with…

Student college loan default rates have nearly doubled in recent years. The three-year default rate exceeds 13 percent nationally. Tracking and reporting default rates is a crucial means of monitoring how well higher education dollars are spent. Yet, the way default data is gathered, measured, and reported by the federal government clouds…

The Department of Education (Education) relies on collection agencies to assist borrowers in rehabilitating defaulted student loans, which allows borrowers who make nine on-time monthly payments within 10 months to have the default removed from their credit reports. Education works with 22 collection agencies to locate borrowers and explain…

The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) and the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) embarked on a yearlong effort to identify and examine ways to make financial aid research more relevant to financial aid practitioners. To inform their recommendations, they surveyed NASFAA members, reviewed the…

Little is known about the long-term socio-economic impact of student loan debt on African-American graduates of the University of Phoenix who reside in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The purpose of this case study is to examine the socio-economic impact of student loan debt on these students five years after receiving a degree from this for-profit…

The Virginia Plan for Higher Education is designed to identify trends that the Commonwealth must address if it is to prosper and succeed. Through input by higher education partners, The Virginia Plan is intended to help guide a vision for Virginia's future through a common framework. This framework is built on the premise that all partners in…

ACTA's 12th state higher education report examines questions of great urgency for the state of Mississippi: How should individual public universities choose their leadership? Are the public universities careful stewards of taxpayer dollars? Is free speech protected on Mississippi's college campuses? The report assesses institutions on measures of…

This paper examines the rise in student loan default and delinquency. It draws on a unique set of administrative data on federal student borrowing matched to earnings records from de-identified tax records. Most of the increase in default is associated with borrowers at for-profit schools, 2-year institutions, and certain other nonselective…

The recent significant increase in student loan delinquencies has generated interest in understanding the key factors predicting the non-performance of these loans. However, despite the large size of the student loan market, existing analyses have been limited by lack of data. This paper studies predictors of student loan delinquencies using a…

Over the course of the past few decades student loans have become an increasingly common means of paying for a college education. Most students who complete a college program now take on student loans, and the amount of student debt that students assume has increased along with the price of attending college. At this time about 44 million…

Despite tremendous recent interest in the subject of student debt by both researchers and policy makers, little is known about how the distribution of college graduate debt has been evolving and what factors can explain it. We use National Postsecondary Student Aid Study data from 1990 through 2008 to document the evolution of college graduate…

This document provides a summary of and recommendations from the larger report, "Deeper in Debt: Women and Student Loans" (ED580345). Over the course of the past few decades student loans have become an increasingly common means of paying for a college education. Most students who complete a college program now take on student loans, and…

As the student aid programs rapidly approach reauthorization in 2014, they continue to face severe funding and efficiency problems. With grant assistance from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through their "Reimagining Aid Design and Delivery" (RADD) project, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) examined…

As the student aid programs rapidly approach reauthorization in 2014, they continue to face severe funding and efficiency problems. With grant assistance from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through their "Reimagining Aid Design and Delivery" (RADD) project, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators…