Student Loan Default Rates Sharply For Crisis Era Graduates

A New York Fed study shows that cumulative default rates for students who graduated or left school in 2009 are much worse than those who finished school before the crisis

A few days ago we reported that student loan delinquency rates continue to rise, reflecting the rising expense of a college education and the disproportionate impact of the financial crisis on young people. But when you break the aggregated data apart by years since leaving school, as New York Fed senior economist Meta Brown and her colleagues didn’t in a recent study, it shows that default rates are likely to keep getting worse for the next four or five years.

“We haven’t seen the full picture of 2009 borrowers who...