Study: Student Loan Default Rates Highest Among Minorities A new analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data shows high student loan default rates for Black and Hispanic students, students who leave college with a heavy debt burden and college graduates who take low-paying jobs.
The NCES data, which disaggregates default loans by student characteristics, paint a picture that’s much different than U.S. Department of Education statistics. The department recently announced that the percentage of students who failed to repay government student loans within the first two years of repayment was 4.5 percent. But NCES data, which is a 10-year follow up on the debt status of students who graduated in 1993, puts the overall default rate at 9.7 percent.
NCES also found that students with $15,000 in loans were nearly three times as likely to default on their loan than a student with $5,000 in loans. Graduates with the lowest salaries in the cohort were four times likely to default than those with the highest salaries.
