Five-hundred colleges and universities in the U.S. now share one alarming distinction: At least 40% of recent students who borrowed federal loans aren’t paying them back. That’s according to the latest federal nonpayment-rate data published by the U.S. Education Department.
The data looks at the roughly 17 million borrowers who entered repayment for the first time between January 2020 and May 2025.
“These numbers are really jaw-dropping,” says Eileen Connor, head of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, a nonprofit that advocates for borrowers and that reviewed the data.
