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Research papers on Student loan debt

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  1. Student Loans: Do College Students Borrow Too Much—Or Not Enough?

    Christopher Avery, Sarah Turner · 2012 · The Journal of Economic Perspectives · 394 citations

    Total student loan debt rose to over $800 billion in June 2010, overtaking total credit card debt outstanding for the first time. By the time this article sees print, the continually updated Student Loan Debt Clock will show an accumulated total of roughly $1 trillion. Borrowing to finance educational expenditures has been increasing—more than quadrupling in real dollars since the early 1990s. The sheer magnitude of these figures has led to increased public commentary on the level of student borrowing. We move the discussion of student loans away from anecdote by establishing a framework for considering the use of student loans in the optimal financing of collegiate investments. From a finan

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  2. Is a Household Debt Overhang Holding Back Consumption?

    Karen E. Dynan · 2012 · Brookings Papers on Economic Activity · 328 citations

    The recent plunge in U.S. home prices left many households that had borrowed voraciously during the credit boom highly leveraged, with very high levels of debt relative to the value of their assets. Analysts often assert that this “debt overhang” created a need for household deleveraging that, in turn, has been depressing consumer spending and impeding the economic recovery. This paper uses household-level data to examine this hypothesis. I find that highly leveraged homeowners had larger declines in spending between 2007 and 2009 than other homeowners, despite having smaller changes in net worth, suggesting that their leverage weighed on consumption above and beyond what would have been pre

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  3. A Crisis in Student Loans?: How Changes in the Characteristics of Borrowers and in the Institutions They Attended Contributed to Rising Loan Defaults

    Adam Looney, Constantine Yannelis · 2015 · Brookings Papers on Economic Activity · 280 citations

    This paper examines the rise in student loan default and delinquency. It draws on a unique set of administrative data on federal student borrowing matched to earnings records from de-identified tax records. Most of the increase in default is associated with borrowers at for-profit schools, 2-year institutions, and certain other nonselective institutions. Historically, students at these institutions have constituted a small share of all student borrowers. These nontraditional borrowers have largely come from lower-income families, attended institutions with relatively weak educational outcomes, faced poor labor market outcomes after leaving school, and defaulted at high rates. In contrast, de

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  4. Effect of medical student debt on mental health, academic performance and specialty choice: a systematic review

    Monique Simone Pisaniello, Adon Toru Asahina, Stephen Bacchi, et al. · 2019 · BMJ Open · 237 citations

    Objectives With the high and rising total cost of medical school, medical student debt is an increasing concern for medical students and graduates, with significant potential to impact the well-being of physicians and their patients. We hypothesised that medical student debt levels would be negatively correlated with mental health and academic performance, and would influence career direction (ie, medical specialty choice). Design We performed a systematic literature review to identify articles that assessed associations between medical student mental health, academic performance, specialty choice and debt. The databases PubMed, Medline, Embase, Scopus and PsycINFO were searched on 12 April

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  5. Debt, Cohabitation, and Marriage in Young Adulthood

    Fenaba R. Addo · 2014 · Demography · 194 citations

    Despite growing evidence that debt influences pivotal life events in early and young adulthood, the role of debt in the familial lives of young adults has received relatively little attention. Using data from the NLSY 1997 cohort (N = 6,749) and a discrete-time competing risks hazard model framework, I test whether the transition to first union is influenced by a young adult's credit card and education loan debt above and beyond traditional educational and labor market characteristics. I find that credit card debt is positively associated with cohabitation for men and women, and that women with education loan debt are more likely than women without such debt to delay marriage and transition

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  6. What Matters in Student Loan Default: A Review of the Research Literature

    Jacob P. K. Gross, Osman Çekiç, Don Hossler, et al. · 2010 · Journal of Student Financial Aid · 153 citations

    Federal higher education policy has shifted over the past few decades from grants to lloans as the primary means for providing access to postsecondary education for low and moderate-income families. With this shift, policy makers have begun tracking student loan default rates as a key indicator of the efficacy of student loan programs. This effort requires a closer examination of how to define default and what default signifies: What is an acceptable rate of default? What factors contribute to default? Should default rates be used as indicators of institutional quality or loan program efficacy? These questions lead to further investigation of factors influencing default, such as whether defa

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  7. Student Loans, Financial Stress, and College Student Retention

    Sonya L. Britt, David Allen Ammerman, Sarah F. Barrett, et al. · 2017 · Journal of Student Financial Aid · 139 citations

    This study examined a sample of 2,475 undergraduate students to determine the influence of financial stress, debt loads, and financial counseling on retention rates. Results indicate, among other findings, that financial stress contributes to an increased likelihood of discontinuing college. Self-reported student loan debt contributes to an increased likelihood of discontinuing college, although students with the highest amount of university-reported student loan debt have a decreased likelihood of discontinuing college one year later as compared to students with no student loan debt. Interestingly, in this study students who sought financial counseling were more likely to discontinue colleg

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  8. Black-White Disparity in Student Loan Debt More Than Triples After Graduation

    Judith Scott-Clayton, Jing Li · 2024 · VTechWorks (Virginia Tech) · 124 citations

    The moment they earn their bachelor’s degrees, black college graduates owe $7,400 more on average than their white peers ($23,400 versus $16,000, including non-borrowers in the averages). But over the next few years, the black-white debt gap more than triples to a whopping $25,000. Differences in interest accrual and graduate school borrowing lead to black graduates holding nearly $53,000 in student loan debt four years after graduation—almost twice as much as their white counterparts. While previous work has documented racial disparities in student borrowing, delinquencies, and defaults, in this report we provide new evidence that racial gaps in total debt are far larger than even recent re

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  9. Student Loans and Homeownership

    Alvaro Mezza, Daniel Ringo, Shane M. Sherlund, et al. · 2019 · Journal of Labor Economics · 113 citations

    We estimate the effect of student loan debt on subsequent homeownership in a uniquely constructed administrative data set for a nationally representative cohort. We instrument for the amount of individual student debt using changes to the in-state tuition rate at public 4-year colleges in the student’s home state. A $1,000 increase in student loan debt lowers the homeownership rate by about 1.8 percentage points for public 4-year college-goers during their mid-20s, equivalent to an average delay of about 4 months in attaining homeownership. Validity tests suggest the results are not confounded by local economic conditions or changes in educational outcomes.

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  10. Debt burden after college: the effect of student loan debt on graduates’ employment, additional schooling, family formation, and home ownership

    Erin Dunlop Velez, Melissa Cominole, Alexander Bentz · 2018 · Education Economics · 53 citations

    This paper measures the effects of undergraduate student loan debt on graduates’ post-college outcomes: employment, additional enrollment, family formation, home ownership, and net worth. The analysis uses data from a nationally representative sample of 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients. Because a graduate’s debt burden is not randomly assigned, we use an instrumental variable – enrollment-weighted average in-state tuition over four years – to estimate the effect of debt on post-baccalaureate outcomes while minimizing selection bias. We find that four years after graduating, undergraduate debt is related to borrowers’ earnings, job choice, decisions to marry and have children, and net wor

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  13. Crushing Debt or Savvy Strategy? Financial Literacy and Student Perceptions of their Student Loan Debt

    Gail Markle · 2019 · Journal of Student Financial Aid · 14 citations

    Almost three quarters of American college students use loans to fund their college education, although according to public discourse student debt is a critical problem. Grounded in social reproduction theory and consumer socialization theory this study examines the influence of financial literacy on students’ college financing decisions, perceptions of student loan debt, and education-related behavior. A sample of 429 undergraduate students selected using systematic cluster sampling from a large public university in the southeast completed a survey containing closed and open ended questions. Participants reported moderate levels of financial literacy (72.3%) and student loan awareness (62.7%

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  14. Understanding Loan Use and Debt Burden Among Low-income and Minority Students at a Large Urban Community College

    Maria Luna-Torres, Lyle McKinney, Catherine Horn, et al. · 2018 · Journal of Student Financial Aid · 6 citations

    This study examined a sample of community college students from a diverse, large urban community college system in Texas. To gain a deeper understanding about the effects of background characteristics on student borrowing behaviors and enrollment outcomes, the study employed descriptive statistics and regression techniques to examine two separate samples of students consisting of 1) loan recipients and 2) non-loan recipients. Chen’s heterogeneous research model served as the conceptual framework in the selection of predictors of interest and outcome variables. This study primarily focused on the relationship between borrowing and enrollment outcomes of low-income and racially/ethnically dive

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  15. How Much Student Loan Debt Is Too Much?

    Keith Greiner · 1996 · Journal of Student Financial Aid · 6 citations

    Student loan debt may be too burdensome for some college graduates. This paper updates the definition of debt burden based on the perception of borrowers and on federal Department of Housing and Urban Development recommended debt level. The results of a survey of Iowa borrowers suggest that about 74% have manageable debt, while 26% have an excessive debt burden. Nevertheless only about 7% can be expected to default. Those with an excessive debt burden may not be in danger of default because of a variety of available repayment strategies.

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  17. Financing Higher Education through Student Loans: An Examination of Student Loan Take up and the Debt Burden among Ghanaian Tertiary Students

    Stanley K Dary, Harvey S. James · 2019 · International Journal of African Higher Education · 2 citations

    This article examines the factors influencing demand for student loans from Ghana’s Student Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) and the loan debt burden at completion using a sample of 400 final-year students in two higher education institutions in the country’s Upper West Region. The results show that both the loan take-up rate and the loan debt burden among students are relatively low. Demand for student loans and the loan debt burden is modeled as probit and Tobit (left censored), respectively. The results reveal that student age, household size, parents’ occupation, salary, number of income sources, and the length of the study programme play a significant role in explaining the demand for student loa

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  18. Addressing the burden of student loan debt: A case-based review of influencing considerations

    Elisa M Greene, W Nathan Greene, William L Greene · 2021 · American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy · 2 citations

    Abstract Purpose The following review is offered as an aid for encouraging deeper understanding by pharmacy graduates of approaches to debt management. Summary The phenomenon of growing debt for pharmacists and other professionals has been well described. Significant debt is widespread with both pharmacy students and graduates; a recent study described the debt-to-income ratio for pharmacists to have risen by 141% between 2010 and 2016. This increasing debt burden causes significant pressure for these individuals—whether while in training, early in their career, or, increas

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  19. Study shows student loan debt burden 4 years after graduation

    Joan Hope · 2017 · The Successful Registrar

    About 72 percent of students who graduated with bachelor's degrees in 2007–08 borrowed money to pay for either their undergraduate or graduate education, reports the National Center for Education Statistics Institute of Education Sciences. The Debt Burden of Bachelor's Degree Recipients, a new NCES report, examined the debt these students carried four years after graduation.

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