As borrowers await the Supreme Court's decision on a plan to provide mass student debt forgiveness, USA TODAY examined what's behind the gender imbalances in the amount that borrowers take out and in their ability to pay those loans back.

Iliana Panameño wanted to get a master's degree in social work, just like her mother. To afford enrollment at the Boston University School of Social Work, she moved back to her parents' home in Malden, Massachusetts. Panameño took out graduate loans under her own name to avoid burdening her parents financially and risking delaying their […]

"I won a scholarship from the Taco Bell Foundation. And when I submitted the check to my university, they decreased my institutional scholarship by half, they increased my federal loans, and eliminated my work study," Lewis said. "I had to pay over $15,000 out of pocket and it gave me two choices, whether to drop […]

To curb the deepening student loan crisis, the Department of Education aims to impede the abuse of federal funding at for-profit colleges by forcing school leaders to assume personal liability for unpaid institutional debt.