New Data on Federal Student Loan Defaults

As the Biden administration crafts a new, more targeted student debt relief program, the Education Department is offering a more detailed look at the roughly 8 million Americans who were in default on their federal student loans during the pandemic. Most student borrowers who were in default in September 2021 were Pell Grant recipients (67 percent) and those who hadn’t completed their academic program (62 percent). Only about 22 percent of defaulted borrowers were dependents and 3.5 percent had ever taken out loans for graduate school.