The Detrimental Costs of Remedial Education for California Community College Students

Analysis focuses on two key design details that can make income-driven repayment work better for borrowers.

TICAS' sixteenth annual report on debt for bachelor’s degree graduates of public and nonprofit colleges, finds vast variation in debt levels across states as well as colleges.

Report examines funding and resource patterns from the Great Recession to the peak of the economic recovery (2006 to 2018), and takes a deep dive into the public four-year colleges that disproportionately enroll and graduate BIPOC students.

Report provides an in-depth overview of federal and state postsecondary data collection, highlights current legislation that could fill existing equity gaps, and makes policy recommendations for federal and state data collection.

More than six in ten (62%) college seniors who graduated from public and private nonprofit colleges in 2019 had student loan debt and they owed an average of $28,950. This is a lower share of students than the Class of 2018 (65%), and a very slight decline (less than 1%) in total debt from the 2018 average of $29,200.

This brief illustrates that while many borrowers in IDR will repay their loans in full, those who do receive a discharge of remaining debt after 20 or 25 years of responsible payments may face an unaffordable tax liability because these discharged amounts are treated as taxable income under current law.