Student loan default data highlights for-profits

Written By Justin Pope
December 15th, 2009

More than one in five borrowers of federal student loans who attend for-profit colleges default within three years of beginning repayment, new figures made available by the U.S. Department of Education on Monday show. Historically, the government has reported such figures in terms of how many students default within two years - a figure that stands at 6.7 percent of student borrowers overall and about 11 percent at for-profit schools. But the new three-year numbers, though preliminary, give a clearer picture of whether a student at a particular school will default, and the government will soon begin using them to help decide which colleges qualify for taxpayer-supported student aid programs.