LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Many federal student loan borrowers are in crisis. We've previously reported that millions are in default on their loans or well on their way to defaults. New federal data offers one reason why. Hundreds of thousands of these borrowers attended the same problematic schools. NPR's Cory Turner has been digging into this new data, and he joins us now to explain. Good morning, Cory.
CORY TURNER, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: So walk us through the basics here. What's in this new data, and why does it matter?
TURNER: Yeah. So it's a new metric that the Education Department didn't fully publish until this year, looking at all the schools in the entire federal student loan program, and it shows what percentage of a school's recent borrowers are at least three months late on their federal loan payments. And it turns out that this nonpayment rate - that's what they call it - is a pretty darn good thermometer to gauge a school's health and its quality.
So here's what we learned in the data. Borrowers at public and private nonprofit schools, on average, are doing OK. It's the private for-profit schools, Leila, that really got my attention. On average, 1 in 3 recent borrowers at these schools are not repaying their federal loans. And then, when you zoom in on the 500 schools with the highest nonpayment rates in the whole system, it gets much worse, and the vast majority are private for-profits. Eileen Connor heads the Project on Predatory Student Lending. It's a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of borrowers.
EILEEN CONNOR: These numbers were really jaw-dropping. It's really incredible to me that those schools are still in the program. They're still eligible today. They're still enrolling students today. They're still burdening people with debt today. I find it almost incomprehensible.
FADEL: What should people know about what's happening at these schools?
TURNER: Well, it is complicated. Many of these schools fit a pattern. They market short-term career training, especially to vulnerable, lower-income students who are hoping to become hairstylists, electricians, dental assistants, HVAC techs. I called one of the schools on this list, UEI College, where more than half of its recent students are not repaying their loans. In raw numbers, Leila, that is more than 17,000 borrowers late on their payments.
FADEL: Wow.
TURNER: UEI spokesman Joseph Cockrell told me they are, quote, "concerned." They need to do better, and that it is all hands on deck right now reaching out to these borrowers. He says a big part of the problem, though, is the pandemic payment pause, plus all the Biden-era talk of loan forgiveness left borrowers feeling really confused.
JOSEPH COCKRELL: That they didn't know the status of their loans, thought their loans were forgiven, didn't know when or if they had to start repaying.
TURNER: Here's the thing, though, Leila, student loan experts I talked with also said at many of these schools, there's something else going on, something that was true even before the pandemic. If you look at some of these schools, completion rates or their job placement rates, they're often not very good. So too many students are taking out federal loans funded by taxpayers, but they're not paying them back because all that training doesn't lead to a better job.
FADEL: So, Cory, can anything be done about all this?
TURNER: Well, for the moment, no. And that's because the Education Department's accountability system - which punishes schools with high loan default rates - was also paused during the pandemic, and it's taken a while to ramp back up. But the Trump administration chose to publish this data, and it's made clear it's not happy about it - about the results. I was talking with one student loan expert at a conservative-leaning think tank the other day, Leila, and he told me, look, a private lender would probably stop issuing loans to schools with nonpayment rates this high. So why, he asked, does it make sense for taxpayers?
FADEL: NPR education correspondent Cory Turner. Thank you, Cory.
TURNER: You're welcome.
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