by Adam Looney, Brookings
In a new Brookings paper that uses administrative data to look at “large-balance borrowers,” New York University’s Constantine Yannelis and I find that the share of students graduating with more than $50,000 in student debt has more than tripled since 2000, increasing from 5 percent of borrowers in 2000 to 17 percent of student borrowers in 2014. That group now holds the majority of outstanding student debt owed to the government—about $790 billion of the $1.4 trillion total at the end of 2017. Among these borrowers, we’re seeing a troubling trend: They’re repaying their loans more slowly, if at all. In a country where education is still the doorway to opportunity, we should be wary of changes to our student lending system that prevent low-income students from obtaining the quality education their high-income peers can more easily afford.
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