Federal Student Loan Defaults: What Happens After Borrowers Default and Why

Student loan default has attracted considerable attention from journalists and the research community over the past several years, as the Department of Education projects that more than a quarter of federal student loans to undergraduates will end up in default at some point. But less commonly discussed are the pathways that student borrowers follow after defaulting on a federal loan. In this report, the authors combine a comprehensive review of federal policies surrounding default with an analysis of post-default pathways using a newly constructed federal data set of student borrowers.