Inside the shadowy world of tuition financing firms that are putting America’s students into massive debt.
college loans
Posted inFeatured, Political Animal, Politics
Why Are Student Loan Borrowers Being Kept Out of the Coronavirus Recovery?
The student debt crisis is about to get a whole lot worse. Republicans are refusing to help.
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
By the Numbers: Private Student Loan Borrowing Can Leave Students in the Lurch
The Department of Education plans to eliminate reporting requirements on private and institutional loans, exempting those kinds of debt from any accountability or transparency. That’s a mistake.
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Examining Average Student Loan Balances by State
In a blog post last month, I used newly-available data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid to look at the amount of student loan dollars in income-driven repayment plans by amount of debt. In that post, I showed that students with more debt were far more likely to use IDR […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Key Takeaways from the House Higher Education Act Reauthorization Bill
Majority Republicans on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce unveiled their draft legislation today to reauthorize the Higher Education Act—the most important piece of legislation affecting American higher education. The Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform (PROSPER) Act checks in at a hefty 542 pages and touches many important […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Federal Data Shows 3.9 Million Students Dropped out of College with Debt in 2015 and 2016
For-profit sector produced a disproportionate share of indebted dropouts
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Downloadable Dataset of Pell Recipient Graduation Rates
Earlier this week, my blog post summarizing new data on Pell Grant recipients’ graduation rates at four-year colleges was released through the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center Chalkboard blog. I have since received several questions about the data and requests for detailed data for specific colleges, showing the interest within the higher education community for better […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
New Data on Long-Term Student Loan Default Rates
In recent years, more data have come out on how well students are able to manage repaying their loans beyond the three-year window currently used for federal accountability purposes (via cohort default rates). A great 2015 paper by Adam Looney and Constantine Yannelis used tax records merged with data from the National Student Loan Data […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
The Ins and Outs of the Borrower Defense Rule
Click here to download a PDF of this piece. The author worked at the Department of Education during construction of this rule. Introduction In 1994, Congress added to the Higher Education Act a provision directing the Secretary of Education to establish rules to allow students who were misled by their colleges to present a defense […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
The Tangled Web of Student Debt Consolidation Companies
Like seemingly most American households, the Kelchens get far more junk in the mail than actual mail of value. We get about as many credit card applications as our shredder can handle, as well as folks trying to sell us a broad array of products and services. But letters that mention student loan debt and […]
