Student Loan Default Crisis grows worser and worser: Brooking Institution says minorities and for-profit students are hardest hit

First of all, I realize that the word "worser" is not standard English. Nevertheless, "worser" appears in Hamlet (act 3,scene 4). If it is good enough for Shakespeare, it is good enough for me.

Now to the topic at hand. Judith Scott-Clayton recently published a report for the Brookings Institution on the student-loan default crisis. Twelve-year default rates are going up--with minority students and for-profit-college attenders experiencing the highest default rates.

For the 2004 cohort of borrowers who attended a for-profit college, the 12-year default rate was 46.5 percent (darn near half). For African American borrowers from the same cohort, 37.5 percent defaulted within 12 years. The black default rate was three times higher than the white default rate (12.4 percent) and six times higher than the rate for Asians (only 6.2 percent).

Scott-Clayton's report makes clear that the crisis in student-loan defaults among African Americans is acute. Based on the current trajectory, she projects 70 percent of black borrowers will default on their student loans by the end of 20 years.

Scott-Clayton points out that African American default rates are high even for black students who graduate from college. The default rate for African American graduates is five times higher than the default rate among white graduates.  In fact, she points out, the default rate for black college graduates is higher than the default rate for white college dropouts.

African Americans also borrow more money than white students. For the 2004 entry cohort, black students borrowed twice as much as white students for their undergraduate education.

The Scott-Clayton report is alarming, but a 2015 Brookings report (which Scott-Clayton referenced) is even more alarming. Looney and Yannelis, authors of the 2015 report, found that 47 percent of the people in the 2009 cohort of borrowers who took out loans to attend for-profit colleges defaulted within 5 years. For the cohort as a whole, the default rate was 28 percent.

Basically, however, the Scott-Clayton report and the Looney-Yannelis report told us what we already knew.  Student borrowers who attend for-profit colleges have shocking student-loan default rates; and African American students have much higher default rates than white students.

Scott-Clayton concluded her report with some tepid suggestions, which I will quote:

[T]he results suggest that diffuse concern with rising levels of average debt is misplaced. Rather, the results provide support for robust efforts to regulate the for-profit sector, to improve degree attainment and promote income-contingent loan repayment options for all students, and to more fully address the particular challenges faced by college students of color.

Frankly, I disagree with Scott-Clayton's bland recommendations. First, of all, we should be very concerned about the rising level of student debt across all sectors of higher education--not just the for-profit sector.  Millions of student borrowers are suffering, and some of those sufferers are white graduates of Ivy League colleges.

Secondly, although it is easy to call for more "robust" regulation of the for-profits, Betsy DeVos is headed in the opposite direction. DeVos is doing all she can to prop up the corrupt for-profit college industry and to lift all regulatory constraints against the for-profit institutions.  In my view, the best way to deal with the for-profit colleges is to cut off their federal funding and shut them down.

And I stridently disagree with Scott-Clayton's blithe call to promote income-contingent repayment plans. Most of the people in those plans are not making monthly payments large enough to service accruing interest.  At the end of their 20- or 25-year repayment plans, many will owe more than they borrowed.

Moreover, although people who complete long-term repayment plans will have any remaining debt forgiven, the amount of the forgiven debt will be taxable to them.

I suspect the Brookings Institution is advancing a hidden agenda with its reports on the student-loan crisis. Brookings wants the public to focus on minority students and the for-profit colleges while ignoring the fact that debt levels are rising across all sectors of higher education and injuring millions of student borrowers--not just students of color.

Let's face facts. The for-profit colleges are not the only institutions ripping off their students. The Ivy League schools are exploiting students as well. And with each passing day, the crisis gets worser and worser.

References

Adam Looney and Constantine Yannelis. A crisis in student loans? How changes in the characteristics of borrowers and the institutions they attended contribute to rising loan defaults. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2015.

Judith Scott-Clayton. The looming student loan default crisis is worse than we thought. Brooking Institution, January 11, 2018.

Black students and the student loan crisis: African Americans suffer most

Judith Scott-Clayton and Jing Li published a report for the Brookings Institution last month on the disparity in student-debt loads between blacks and whites. Essentially, Scott-Clayton and Li told us us what we should already know, which is this: African Americans are suffering more from student-loan debt than whites.

Scott-Clayton and Li's findings

Here are the report's key findings:

• On average, blacks graduate from college with $23,400 in college loans compared to whites, who graduate with an average debt load of $16,000.

• The disparity in debt loads between blacks and whites nearly triples four years after graduation. By that time, the average debt load for African Americans  is $52,726, compared to $28,006 for white graduates.

• Four years after graduation, black graduates are three times more likely to default on their student loans than whites. For African Americans the rate is 7.6 percent; among whites, only 2.4 percent are in default.

• Four years after graduation, almost half of African American graduate (48 percent) owe more on their undergraduate student loans than they did when they graduated.

• Although African Americans are going to graduate school at higher rates than whites, blacks are three times more likely to be in a for-profit graduate program than whites. Among whites, 9 percent enroll in for-profit graduate programs; for blacks, the rate is 28 percent.

Growing debt loads for black graduates and high numbers of blacks attending for-profit graduate programs: Disturbing

In my mind, Scott-Clayton and Li's most disturbing findings are set forth in the last two bullet points. First, almost half of African American college graduates owe more on their undergraduate loans four years after graduation than they did on graduation day,  What's going on? 

Clearly, people who are seeing their total indebtedness grow four years after beginning the repayment phase on their loan are not making loan payments large enough to cover accruing interest.  Those people either defaulted on their loans, have loans in deferment/forbearance, or are making token payments under income-based repayment plans that are not large enough to pay down the principle on their loans.

Surely it is evident that people with growing student-loan balances four years after graduation are more likely to eventually default on their loans than people who are shrinking their loan balances.

Scott-Clayton and Li's finding that a quarter of African American graduates students are enrolled in for-profit colleges is also alarming. We know for-profit colleges charge more than  public institutions and have higher default rates and dropout rates. It should disturb us to learn that blacks are three times more likely than whites to be lured into for-profit graduate programs.

Income-Based Repayment Plans do not alleviate the high level of student indebtedness among African Americans

The Obama administration and the higher education community tout long-term income-based repayment plans (IBRPs) as the way to alleviate the suffering caused by crushing levels of student debt. But as Scott-Clayton and Li correctly point out, new repayment options such as  REPAYE "may alleviate the worst consequences of racial debt disparities," but they fail "to address the underlying causes."

Lowering monthly payments and extending the repayment period from 10 years to 20 or 25 years does not relieve African Americans from crushing levels of student debt. We've got to shut down the for-profit college sector to eliminate the risk that people will enroll in overpriced for-profit graduate programs that are often of low quality..And we've got to fundamentally reform the federal student-loan program so that African Americans and indeed all Americans can graduate from college without being burdened by unreasonably high levels of debt.

References

Judith Scott-Clayton and Jing Li. Black-white disparity in student loan debt more than triples after graduation. Evidence Speaks Reports, Vol. 2, #3, Brookings Institution, October 20, 2016. Available at https://www.brookings.edu/research/black-white-disparity-in-student-loan-debt-more-than-triples-after-graduation/

Senators Lamar Alexander and Michel Bennet Propose a Simpler FAFSA form: What a Good Idea!

"Everything should be made as simple as possible," Albert Einstein observed, "but not simpler."  And indeed, simplicity, is a great virtue.  How many of us have struggled with a problem we thought was complicated, only to have an "ah ha" moment when we realized our problem was not as complicated as we first believed.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Senator Lamar and Senator Bennet Have A Good Idea for Streamlining Federal Student Aid Applications

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado have struck a blow for simplicity in the federal student aid program, a program that is entirely too complicated.   As they explained in an op ed essay in the New York Times earlier this week, the two senators have introduced a bill to reduce the complexity of the standardized federal student aid form, which every college student must fill out to qualify for federal student aid.

Currently, this form, commonly called the FAFSA form, has 108  questions and is 10 pages long. With its attached instructions, the entire form is 82 pages long!

Senators Lamar and Bennet propose to throw this form out, which is so complicated and time-consuming that many students simply forgo applying for federal student aid. 

They want to substitute a form that only has two questions:  What is your family size? What was your household income two years ago?

Senators Lamar and Bennet's proposed legislation would also reduce the number of federal student loan programs to three: one program for undergraduates, another for graduate students, and a third for parents who borrow money to pay for their children's college education .  And, perhaps most importantly, they propose just two repayment options: the standard 10-year repayment plan and an income-based repayment plan.  

Lamar and Bennet's op ed essay did not provide any details about what their income-based repayment plan would look like.  Would it be a variation of President Obama's Pay As You Earn plan, requiring borrowers to pay 10 percent of their discretionary income over 20 years or would it would be a less generous variation?  But the simplicity of having a single income-based repayment plan will reduce the confusion many college-loan borrowers experience when they try to convert their 10-year repayment plans to long-term income-basde repayment plans.

Senators Lamar and Bennet acknowledged the input they got for their reform proposals from Susan Dynarski and Judith Scott-Clayton. Ms. Dynarski is co-author of a provocative Brookings Institution study that recommends payroll deductions as the most efficient way for students to make their loan payments if they are enrolled in income-based repayment plans. (I discussed this proposal in my last blog posting.)

Efficiency-Driven Reforms Are Good But Radical Reforms of the Federal Student Loan Program Are Necessary
Senator Lamar and Senator Bennet have made sensible proposals for improving the way the Federal Student Loan Program Operates. And Susan Dynarski and the Brookings Institution have also made reasonable proposals for collecting student-loan payments from borrowers who participate in income-based repayment programs.  

Without a doubt, these proposals will help make the federal student aid program operate more efficiently. But they won't help bring the federal student loan program under control.  These proposals do nothing to stop the runaway cost of higher education. They do nothing to address the abuses in the for-profit college industry, and they do nothing the ease the strain on millions of student-loan debtors who are already in default. 

We won't be getting serious about addressing the student loan crisis until we amend the bankruptcy laws to allow worthy college-loan debtors to obtain bankruptcy relief, publicize the real student-loan default rate, and rein in the for-profit colleges.  Unless we do these things, other reform proposals will do nothing more than put a band-aid on a gaping wound. 

References

Lamar Alexaner & Michael Bennet. An Answer on a Postcard. New York Times, June 19, 2014, p.  A25.