Certain federal student loans have been paused (with no interest or monthly payments due) between March 2020 and September 2023. With this pause now over, borrowers are again making payments on federal student loans and there are very few data sources tracking the return to repayment. The following interactive tool uses one of these sources to help higher education researchers, administrators, and policymakers monitor the return to student loan repayment.
Data details. When borrowers make payments on certain federal loans, these payments go to the U.S. Department of Education and in turn are deposited into the Treasury General Fund. The Daily Treasury Statement (DTS) provides a public record of these transactions and can be a useful data source for tracking the transition to repayment. Politico, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia have used DTS data to explore trends in student loan repayment. And ED has compared DTS data to more granular data from the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), showing Treasury deposits are typically higher but mirror NSLDS data very closely. The data underlying this tool provide useful “big picture” trends in the return to repayment. The SSTAR Lab team will update this resource with new data throughout the year.
Click here to view Tableau data source.
Evaluating Federal Student Loan Repayment Outcomes at Six Research Universities
The SSTAR Lab partnered with Arnold Ventures and six research universities to share data on student loan repayment in order to support ongoing efforts to monitor, assess, and improve loan outcomes of former students. The resulting report highlights key repayment statistics at these universities including undergraduate and graduate students’ original and outstanding balances, participation in income-driven repayment plans, loan default rates, and paid in full rates. The report also estimates repayment rates used in College Scorecard and proposed in the PROSPER Act and the College Affordability Act.