University of Wisconsin–Madison
This opinion article, written by Nick Hillman, originally appeared in USA Today. Early decision letters from top-tier schools are starting to go out — which means we’re about to be inundated with stats about competitive admissions and low acceptance rates. But while you wouldn’t know it from a quick glance at the news headlines, where …
This story originally appeared in the Hechinger Report. The nation’s student debt crisis is back on the agenda in Washington. Monthly payments on $1.6 trillion federal student loans have been suspended since late March, but that coronavirus break is scheduled to expire at the end of January. The question now is whether 43 million borrowers …
This story originally appeared in Marketplace. About 42 million Americans hold a total of $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. The hot-button issue of student loan cancellation, or forgiveness, has once again been top of mind after Sen. Chuck Schumer said in an interview that President-elect Joe Biden could wipe out the first $50,000 of …
This story originally appeared in Inside Higher Ed. Broad-access institutions, often community colleges and regional public universities, defined as those that admit 80 to 100 percent of applicants, spend a little less than $15,000 on academic basics for each full-time-equivalent student. Highly selective institutions, defined as those that admit less than 40 percent of applicants, spend just …
Previous work in this series has addressed student loan default rates, but default is an extreme event. To build a more comprehensive understanding of loan repayment, this post reports student loan repayment rates at Wisconsin schools to better understand the lifecycle of loan repayment. The U.S. Department of Education reports student loan repayment rates for …
While most borrowers will not default on their student loans, the steep consequences of doing so make default one of the most pernicious possible outcomes for student borrowers. To supplement our previous work highlighting school-level default rates, this post highlights geographic variation in student loan default across Wisconsin counties. We find that 11% of all …
This story originally appeared on the UW–Madison School of Education website. The Student Success Through Applied Research (SSTAR) Lab, directed by UW–Madison’s Nick Hillman, has launched a new series on its website titled “Student Debt in Wisconsin.” “It is surprisingly difficult to find authoritative and timely data on this topic,” explains the main web page …
While previous posts in this series have focused on student borrowing, here we shift attention to one of the most pernicious outcomes student borrowers can experience: default, or failing to make agreed-upon payments towards their outstanding loans. Borrowers who default on their loans are likely to see credit scores plummet, and the federal government can …
Our previous work examined statewide and regional trends in student debt. In this post, we use data from the US Department of Education’s College Scorecard to see how debt varies across Wisconsin’s public, non-profit, and for-profit colleges and universities. The Scorecard reports median federal student loan debt for borrowers completing a certificate, associate, or bachelor’s …
So far, this series has focused on average debt and how it is distributed among Wisconsin federal loan borrowers. Here, we shift attention to Wisconsin’s 12 metro areas and provide an interactive tool to explore regional differences in student debt. Data are based on the Federal Reserve Bank’s Consumer Credit Explorer, which reports median student …