HBCU Default Rates: Time to Revisit the Past
Early last year, my colleague Robin Smiles and I published a report called Lowering Student Loan Default Rates. The report looked at the steps a consortium of six historically black colleges in Texas took a decade ago to reduce their student loan default rates. In the wake of the new three-year cohort default rates released by the Department of Education last week, it may be time for these, and many other, institutions to revisit the steps this group of small, private colleges took to successfully lower their default rates.
Overall, the default rate on student loans jumped from 7 percent under the two-year calculation to 13.8% under the three-year calculation – nearly double. And it’s not just for-profit colleges that may be in trouble. While colleges won’t be held accountable for the new, three-year cohort default rates until 2014, many will need