The spike in student loan defaults over the last decade has been fueled by students attending for-profit colleges and, to a lesser degree, community colleges, according to a new analysis of millions of federal student loan records.
The paper, released Thursday as part of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, argues that the student loan crisis, to the extent there is one, is concentrated only among these "nontraditional" borrowers at for-profit and community colleges.
As students flocked to those institutions during the recession, they accounted for a huge surge in loan borrowing and the subsequent defaults on the loans as they faced poor job prospects and low earnings, the report says.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/11/study-finds-profit-colleges-drove-spike-student-loan-defaults