Poll: Young Adults Say Higher Education is More Important but Less Affordable

A national bi-partisan survey of adults ages 18-34 reveals that young adults today believe a college education is more important than it was for their parents' generation, that it has become less affordable in the last five years, and that students are leaving school with too much debt. 

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Student Debt and the Class of 2010

Two-thirds of college seniors graduated with loans in 2010, and they carried an average of $25,250 in debt. They also faced the highest unemployment rate for young college graduates in recent history at 9.1%. Our new report, Student Debt and the Class of 2010, includes average debt levels for the 50 states and District of Columbia and for more than 1,000 U.S. colleges and universities.

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Sharp Uptick in Federal Student Loan Default Rates

New data released by the U.S. Department of Education shows a sharp increase in the rate at which student loan borrowers are defaulting. The official "two-year cohort default rates" show that 8.8 percent of student loan borrowers who entered repayment in 2009 had defaulted by the end of 2010, up from 7 percent for those entering repayment in 2008. Our resource page provides background and useful links about cohort default rates for reporters, policymakers, and the general public.

Critical Choices: How Colleges Can Help Students and Families Make Better Decisions about Private Loans

Our new report Critical Choices: How Colleges Can Help Students and Families Make Better Decisions about Private Loans documents promising practices that a variety of financial aid offices are using to help prospective borrowers avoid unnecessarily risky and costly debt. It also identifies some problematic practices that bypass key opportunities to inform students' and parents' borrowing decisions.

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