Feds' Data Error Inflated Loan Repayment Rates on the College Scorecard

Kim Dancy and Ben Barrett's blog post about the U.S. Department of Education's error in calculating repayment rates was quoted in Inside Higher Ed:

Also crunching the numbers and finding similarly large corrections were Kim Dancy, a policy analyst with the education policy program at New America, and Ben Barrett, a program associate there.

"The new data reveal that the average institution saw less than half of their former students managing to pay even a dollar toward their principal loan balance three years after leaving school," they wrote in a blog post. "Even more borrowers are not making progress on their loans than previously thought."

The department's error had less of an impact on repayment rates across longer time horizons, Dancy and Barrett said, meaning the corrected rate dropped less for borrowers who entered repayment seven years ago than for those who entered three years ago.