About one in seven borrowers defaulted on their federal student loans, showing how former students are buckling under higher-education costs in a weak economy, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The default rate, for the first three years that students are required to make payments, was 14.7 percent, up from 13.4 percent the year before, the U.S. Education Department said yesterday. Based on a related measure, defaults are at the highest level since 1995. U.S. borrowers owe $1.2 trillion in student-loan debt — including government loans and those from private lenders such as SLM Corp., commonly called Sallie Mae. That sum surpasses all other kinds of consumer borrowing except for mortgages.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-09-30/student-loan-defaults-ri…
For an analysis of student debt issues in bankruptcy, make sure to pick up ABI’s newest title, Graduating with Debt: Student Loans under the Bankruptcy Code, now available in the ABI Bookstore.