By Jordan Weissmann – The Atlantic
The official student loan default rate has hit a 16-year high, the Department of Education reported yesterday. One out of every ten borrowers whose loans went into repayment during 2011 defaulted within two years. That's up from a 9 percent two-year default rate among students who began repaying in 2010. Another 12 months has gone by, and the student loan crisis, sadly, has kept getting deeper.
It might seem a bit redundant to talk about Washington's dysfunction today, but what you're looking at in the graph above is partly the a tragic product of political neglect. For the past couple of years, every overwrought confrontation about student loans on Capitol Hill has focused on tweaking interest rates, and specifically, on tweaking interest rates for new borrowers. In the meantime, our policy makers have utterly ignored the millions of former students who have already taken out loans and are falling behind. They've hung them out to dry. Or, really, to default.
Keep reading: Student-Loan Defaults are Still Soaring Thanks to Washington's Neglect – Jordan Weissmann – The Atlantic.
