Higher Ed For-Profits: more worrisome factoids

Government Vastly Undercounts Defaults (Chronicle of Higher Education)

     The share of borrowers who default on their student loans is bigger than the federal government's short-term data suggest, with thousands more facing damaged credit histories and millions more tax dollars being lost in the long run.
     According to unpublished data obtained by The Chronicle, one in every five government loans that entered repayment in 1995 has gone into default. The default rate is higher for loans made to students from two-year colleges, and higher still, reaching 40 percent, for those who attended for-profit institutions.. . .
     They also show that the government's official "cohort-default rate," which measures the percentage of borrowers who default in the first two years of repayment and is used to penalize colleges with high rates, downplays the long-term cost of defaults, capturing only a sliver of the loans that eventually lapse.
     While the data obtained by The Chronicle are not directly comparable to the two-year rate, which reports defaults by borrowers rather than loans, they reveal that default rates continue to climb years after borrowers have left college, particularly among students who attended two-year and for-profit colleges.
     For loans made to community-college students, the 15-year default rate is 31 percent. David S. Baime, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, called that number "shockingly high."
     "It's really just a tragedy given the consequences of student loan default," he said.
     Borrowers who default on their student loans face significant personal and financial burdens. They become ineligible for additional federal aid and may have their wages and tax refunds seized by the government. Their negative credit records make it harder for them to obtain car loans, mortgages, and credit cards, and even apartments or jobs. When they can get loans, they pay higher interest rates.
     But it's the high rates of default at for-profit institutions that are likely to get the most attention from members of Congress, who have recently raised concerns about the cost and quality of for-profit higher education. Fifteen years into repayment, two out of every five loans made to students who attended two-year for-profit colleges are in default.. . .
     "We have a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely, and that for-profit colleges are serving students, not just shareholders," said Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate committee, in his opening remarks. Shown the 15-year default data for for-profits after the hearing, he appeared taken aback. "Whoa," he said.
     While for-profits educate less than 10 percent of students, those colleges' students received close to a quarter of Pell Grant and federal-student-loan dollars in 2008, according to the College Board. And they accounted for 44 percent of defaults among borrowers who entered repayment in 2007, according to the Institute for College Access and Success, a nonprofit organization that advocates making higher education more affordable. When the government can't collect on those loans, taxpayers pick up the tab.. . .
     …Gail O. Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College, of the City University of New York, said comparing community colleges with their for-profit counterparts ignores the fact that far fewer community-college students borrow. So while the percentages of defaults may be similar, the number of defaulted loans of former community-college students is smaller.
     Only 10 percent of community-college students took out federal Stafford loans—the most common type of federal education loan—in the 2007-8 academic year, and most borrowed less than $10,000, according to the College Board. At for-profit colleges, 88 percent of students took out Stafford loans, and nearly 20 percent of associate-degree recipients graduated with more than $30,000 in debt. Those borrowing rates reflect the higher cost of attending a for-profit college. In the 2009-10 academic year, the average for-profit institution charged $14,174 in tuition and fees, according to the College Board, and the average community college only $2,544.. . .
     By any measure, for-profit colleges account for a disproportionate share of student-loan defaults. Two years into repayment, 11.9 percent of borrowers who attended for-profit colleges have defaulted on their federal loans, compared with 6.2 percent of those who attended public colleges and 4.1 percent who attended private colleges, according to provisional data that the Education Department released in February. Three years out, for-profit colleges' default rate has nearly doubled, to 21.2 percent of borrowers, and the gap between the sectors has widened….