College Completion Is the Best Default Aversion

More than 7 million borrowers are in default across the U.S. As I wrote over at The Hill today, for many students, the most important way to avoid default is to make it to graduation day:

According to a New America analysis of the Department of Education’s “Beginning Postsecondary Students” survey, of all students who began school in 2003-04 and were in default on their student loans six years later, the overwhelming majority — more than 60 percent — were students who left school with no degree. Of all the dropouts in the survey — defaulting or not — about one in four were unemployed as of 2009. That’s twice the unemployment rate of students who obtained a bachelor’s degree.

Read the full piece at The Hill.