We study the labor market returns to a State guaranteed loan used to finance university degrees in Chile. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that marginally eligible students forego vocational education in favor of universities but reduce their probability of graduation. Despite...

The Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan decreases the burden of student loan debt for borrowers with high levels of debt or relatively low incomes. For borrowers with high debt or low income, student loan debt payments are based on income instead of the amount of debt and the interest rate. The...

There is ample concern that college students are making ill-informed student loan decisions with potentially negative consequences to themselves and the broader economy. This paper reports the results of a randomized field experiment in which college students are provided salient information...

This paper uses new administrative data with detailed borrower information and lengthy repayment histories from the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP) to mea- sure rates of return on undergraduate student loans. We document substantial heterogeneity in returns based on information available at...

On April 1, 2021, the Biden Administration announced that Secretary of Education Michael Cardona will consider whether the President has legal authority to forgive up to $50,000 per debtor in student loan debt without further Congressional action. This paper collects the leading arguments for...

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’...

In the United States, college students must complete the Free Application for Student Federal Aid (FAFSA) to access all forms of federal aid. However, many eligible students do not apply and consequently forgo significant amounts of financial aid. Using data from the 1999-2000, 2003-2004, and...

How does the financial aid allocation mechanism affect student behavior? We provide a framework for quantifying the impact of financial aid on student debt, academic capital, and labor market outcomes. We specify and estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of simultaneous education, work, and...