With a license to use individually identifiable information on student loan borrowers, we find that a majority of distressed student borrowers manage their debt sub-optimally and that suboptimal debt management is associated with higher loan delinquency. Loan mismanagement varies across student...

This paper looks at consumer complaints about student loan lenders and servicers from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB’s) consumer complaint database. Using a novel dataset drawn from 30,678 complaints filed against 212 student loan companies, we analyze consumers’...

Student loan servicers play a critical and underappreciated role in federal student oan programs. The federal government contracts out to servicers an array of many of the most critical functions related to student loan repayment, including account management, payment processing, and the...

Although the federal government dedicated nearly $40 billion to funding student loans in 2006, only 60 percent of potential students from low-income families attend college, compared with 90 percent from high-income families. This paper argues that enrollment rates are lower than they could be...

Students of poor families invest much less than rich families in college education. To assess the role of financing constraints and subsidy schemes in explaining this gap, I structurally estimate an IO/finance model of college choice in the presence of financing frictions. The estimation uses...

For an ever-growing number of students aspiring to higher education, borrowing is essential. Yet the burdens of indebtedness dis-proportionally harm Black and Latinx students. Debt also undermines the meaning and effect of higher education access, enabling many who borrow to reach the middle...