More present than correct

Many happy repayments

TO BELIEVE some young voters—especially those who showed up at Bernie Sanders rallies earlier this year—America is in the midst of a student debt crisis. In 2010 student loans overtook credit cards to become the biggest source of American household debt other than mortgages. Today, they total about 7% of GDP. Of those who have borrowed from the federal government and began repayments in 2011, 10% defaulted within two years, up from 4.5% in 2003. The problem animates the left: whereas Donald Trump has talked about the subject only fleetingly, Hillary Clinton has detailed policies for helping penniless scholars. Who could oppose such a worthy aim?

Defaults on student debt are highest among so-called “non-traditional” students. They attend community colleges, which provide short, typically two-year courses, or profitmaking universities, which offer heavily marketed and pricey degrees which are sometimes of dubious merit. According to number-crunching by Adam Looney of the Treasury Department and Constantine Yannelis of New York University, non-traditional students made up more than half of all new...Continue reading

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