Messengers of Bad News or Bad Apples? Student Debt and College Accountability

Rajeev Darolia

Education Finance and Policy, 2015, vol. 10, issue 2, 277-299

Abstract: Student loan debt and defaults have been steadily rising, igniting public worry about the associated public and private risks. This has led to controversial regulatory attempts to curb defaults by holding colleges, particularly those in the for-profit sector, increasingly accountable for the student loan repayment behavior of their students. Such efforts endeavor to protect taxpayers against the misuse of public money used to encourage college enrollment and to safeguard students against potentially risky human capital investments. Recent policy proposals penalize colleges for students’ poor repayment performance, raising questions about institutions’ power to influence this behavior. Many of the schools at risk of not meeting student loan default measures also disproportionately enroll low-income, nontraditional, and financially independent students. Policy makers therefore face the challenge of promoting the efficient use of public funds and protecting students while also encouraging access to higher education. © 2015 Association for Education Finance and Policy

Keywords: student; loan; debt; student loan; defaults; public risk; private risk; college enrollment; human capital investments; low-income; nontraditional; public funds; higher education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I21 I22 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/EDFP_a_00161 (application/pdf)
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:edfpol:v:10:y:2015:i:2:p:277-299

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1557-3060

Access Statistics for this article

Education Finance and Policy is currently edited by Stephanie Riegg Cellini and Randall Reback

More articles in Education Finance and Policy from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kelly McDougall ().