At Colorlines, Julianne Hing points to a study at the Chronicle of Higher Education that found many more students default on their government loans than was previously reported. Twenty percent of government loans that began in 1995 have been in default; 31 percent of those to community college students; and 40 percent of those for students who go to for-profit colleges.
There are a number of reasons for-profit colleges, which cost more and lure students into credential programs for professions that really don't pay that well, are bad deals for students. But that's especially true for the low-income students they prey upon. But the default rates for other students hint at a larger story, and that's how much students raised in low-income households, who are the ones who qualify for many of the federal loans, struggle to move into the middle class, especially when they're saddled with huge student loans. I wrote last month about how hard it was for those students to graduate, and that's for a variety of reasons that aren't as straightforward as tuition costs.
But it also indicates a looming problem, as Hing writes. The higher the amount of debts students leave school with, the more they struggle to repay. And the number of students graduating with more than $25,000 has tripled in the last decade and is continuing to grow.
-- Monica Potts
