For decades, the federal government’s main yardstick for judging how colleges perform with federal aid dollars has been the default rate on student loans. Each year the U.S. Department of Education tallies up how many borrowers from a given college fell so far behind on their federal loan payments that they defaulted within several years of starting to repay.
But for every borrower who defaults on a student loan, there are many more who are unable to make progress in repaying their loans and are watching their balances grow, years after attending college, according to data released this month by the Obama administration.
More than one out of every three student loan borrowers nationwide failed to make any progress repaying his or her loans within three years, according to the data. By contrast, the national three-year default rate on federal loans was 13.7 percent last year.
The administration’s new data on loan repayment arrive as enthusiasm is building for using loan repayment rates as a more comprehensive metric to judge colleges.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/23/new-college-scorecard-repayment-data-fuels-debate-over-accountability-higher-ed