HOBOKEN, N.J.–LendEDU has released its second annual student loan default rate report, using Department of Education data to identify default rates at nearly 4,500 colleges and to analyze statewide and school-type trends.
Among the findings:
- The national student loan default rate for the 2017 fiscal year was 9.70%, which is a decrease of .40 percentage points from when the student loan default rate was 10.10% for the 2016 fiscal year (last year's report).
- Not surprisingly, said LendEDU, for-profit institutions had the highest collective student loan default rate (14.70%), followed by public institutions (9.30%), and private institutions (6.70%).
- When it came to ethnic school-types, Native American Colleges had the highest student loan default rate (19.73%), followed by HBCUs (16.65%), Ethnically Not Reported Colleges (9.18%), and Hispanic Colleges (8.68%).
- Going state-by-state, Massachusetts had the lowest student loan default rate (5.83%), followed by Vermont (6.19%), North Dakota (6.30%), California (6.40%), and Utah (6.60%), LendEDU found.
- Mississippi had the highest student loan default rate (15.19%) and was closely followed by Oklahoma (15.15%), Louisiana (14.91%), New Mexico (13.66%), and West Virginia (12.96%).
- Similar to last year, states in the Northeast and Midwest tended to have lower student loan default rates, while states in the South typically had the highest student loan default rates, LendEDU reported.
Because this is the second year the company has released the default report, it noted year-over-year trends are also available in this year's version.
The full report can be found here.