New Data Confirm Troubling Student Loan Default Problems
More than 600,000 federal student loan borrowers who entered repayment in 2010 defaulted on their loans by 2012, new federal data show. The largest share of these students – 46 percent –attended for-profit colleges, which enrolled just 13 percent of students nationally. For-profit colleges also had a much higher average default rate than other types of schools: 21.8 percent, compared to 13.0 percent at public and 8.2 percent at nonprofit colleges. Across all colleges, 14.7 percent of borrowers defaulted within three years of entering repayment.