Welcome to our library. Here you’ll find access to a plethora of information from third-party sources.
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While we do our best to provide access to objective information it should be noted that the views, information, or opinions expressed through any of the links within are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of HUG Your Student Debt, Inc. “HUG” and/or its employees or representatives.
More student debtors are falling behind on their federal student loans, after three years of declines in late payments—and with no clear explanation, experts aren’t sure whether to take it as a sign of distress or a temporary blip.
The share of Americans at least 31 days late on loans from the U.S. Department of Education ticked up to 18.8 percent as of June 30, up from 18.6 percent the same time last year, new federal data show 1 . About 3.3 million Americans have gone more than a...
The new chairman of the Federal Reserve questioned why struggling borrowers can’t discharge their student loans in bankruptcy.
“Alone among all kinds of debt, we don’t allow student loan debt to be discharged in bankruptcy,” Jerome Powell told members of the Senate Banking Committee Thursday. “I’d be at a loss to explain why that should be the case.”
Powell’s comments came in response to a question from Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, about whether high levels of...
Forty-four million Americans hold a total of $1.3 trillion in student loan debt. According to the Federal Reserve, the average amount of debt held by student loan borrowers is $32,731, and the average monthly amount due is $393.
Of these borrowers, 19 percent are behind on their payments.
If you miss a payment on your federal student loans, you have 270 days to make a payment before your debt goes into default. More than 3,000 people default on their federal student loans every...
If you have some extra cash at the end of the month and are carrying burdensome student loan debt, you might be considering paying down those loans early. But in some cases, it may be better to keep paying the loans according to your current payment schedule. Here are some examples of when it's smarter to put your money elsewhere.
High rate debt
Student loans tend to carry lower interest rates than other kinds of debt. So if you've taken on additional debt bearing a high...
How much debt do students graduate with in your state or at a particular college? Use the interactive map below and the other links on this page to explore those questions and more for the Class of 2017.
For more information about student debt by state and college, along with policy recommendations to reduce the burden of student debt, see our full report, Student Debt and the Class of 2017.
Click on a state for in-depth information, or select a state here:
Every year, the U.S. Department of Education gives over $120 billion in federal grants, loans and work-study funds to more than 13 million college students, making it the largest provider of student financial aid in the country. Now, students may be given some of these funds on a debit card.
According to The Hill, the Department of Education plans to launch a pilot program which would place financial aid dollars onto debit cards for up to 100,000 students. Earlier this month the...
A battle brewing between states, student loan companies and Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education looks like it will come to a head in a courtroom in the coming months.
The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, or PHEAA, one of the large firms that manages federal student loans on behalf of the Department of Education, sued Connecticut’s department of banking, it’s banking commissioner and the federal Department of Education on Thursday over the state’s student loan laws....
Subsidized and unsubsidized loans are federal student loans for eligible students to help cover the cost of higher education at a four-year college or university, community college, or trade, career, or technical school. The U.S. Department of Education offers eligible students at participating schools Direct Subsidized Loans and Direct Unsubsidized Loans. (Some people refer to these loans as Stafford Loans or Direct Stafford Loans.)
Some teachers who received a special grant from the Education Department to help pay for their own tuition are saying their grants were wrongly converted into loans, NPR reported.
The department’s Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) grants are awarded to college students who teach in “high-need” fields like math and science at low-income schools.
The grants, which can total up to $4,000 an academic year, remain grants so long as recipients...
The letters "CFPB" may not be much more than alphabet soup to your average student loan borrower. They stand for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new-ish federal agency — created in 2011 — with a unique mission and a big effect on student lenders and for-profit colleges accused of defrauding or otherwise mistreating Americans.
But the U.S. Education Department has just called a halt to the enforcement collaboration between itself and CFPB. This move leaves 44 million student...
The Republican tax bill directly targets the nation’s elite private universities — including Harvard, Yale and Princeton — with a new levy aimed at multibillion-dollar endowments that have never before been taxed.
Under the bill headed to President Donald Trump’s desk the most well-to-do private universities would have to pay a 1.4 percent tax on earnings from their endowments, which are largely built on donations from prosperous alumni and enhanced by investments. Although scrutiny...
Students and their families have struggled to build their dreams on top of student debt. Since the start of the Great Recession, student loan debt in the United States has doubled, with every graduating class owing more for their college degree than the class before. More than 44 million people — or the population of 20 states combined — owe a total of $1.4 trillion (more than the nation’s credit card debt) for their college educations.
Even as the financial crisis and Great Recession receded, student debt began to mushroom, presenting a new credit dilemma for the U.S.
The explosive rise of student debt – from half a trillion in 2007 to $1.3 trillion in 2017 – has been blamed for holding back homeownership, for dampening discretionary spending throughout the economy, and for saddling young people with burdens they couldn’t appropriately evaluate or prepare for.
Now an academic paper suggests the surge in...
Summary: All student loans are subject to borrowing limits. Annual limits specify how much you can borrow in a single school year, aggregate (cumulative) limits specify how much you can borrow through that loan program, and cost of attendance limits specify that the loan amount must be less than the school’s official cost of attendance minus other financial aid received.
I can’t believe I have already been an attorney for about five years! Time really flies when you’re having “fun,” and it is crazy to think that I have been practicing law for so long. When I first started my career, I had many fears about student loans, and I also misunderstood the impact that student loans could have on my life. I never thought that I would be debt free so early in my career, and I also did not totally grasp the reality of living with student loans when I was a first-year...
There's nothing wrong with earning a college degree that will actually help you make money. For students who are interested in earning a good salary without pursuing a graduate degree a major from this list is a good place to start.
As students commit to a college this spring, they face yet another hurdle: Finding the money for four years of tuition payments.
With the cost of college and student loan balances climbing, some parents and their children will clamor for any and all help available.
Yet both prospective and current students should heed this warning: That scholarship or seminar could actually be a scam.
Older African Americans and college students with children disproportionately bear the burden of education debt, according to a pair of reports released this week that researchers say show the need for more nuanced solutions from higher education.
Americans over age 50 collectively hold $247 billion in outstanding federal education loans, an amount that has grown threefold since 2003, policy analysts at the Urban Institute found. The impact of that debt differs depending on whether...
In our report on the Top 25 Highest Paying Majors, we found that the list was dominated by engineering majors. However, this list was based on entry-level salaries, or how much these undergraduate majors earn for their first job right out of college.
A high entry-level salary, however, does not always equate to the best-paying job at the mid-career level. Why? For one reason, some jobs have caps in place that limit how much you can make without going on to get a master’s or Ph.D.
As lawmakers stare down the barrel of a potential trillion-dollar deficit, they’ve already started looking for ways to stanch the bleeding. The F-35 program, a trillion-dollar boondoggle of a weapons platform that only occasionally works, isn’t really on the table. Nor are the massive tax cuts that forged the present budget shortfall. No, where legislators intend to recoup some scratch is in capping access to federal student loans for graduate students.
We’ve all heard that rising student debt is changing the way Americans live their lives. A new study provides some insight into exactly how.
Female law school graduates with high debt are more likely to work in the private sector, postpone marriage and childbearing and marry men with lower earnings than their counterparts with lower levels of debt, according to a working paper distributed this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The authors of the paper, who work at the...
Amid America’s colossal student debt problem, an Ivy League school is providing an example of how institutions can help.
Beginning next school year, Brown University will eliminate all student loans in its undergraduate financial aid packages, replacing them with scholarships. Following a $30 million fundraising effort launched in September, Brown administrators announced this week that 2,087 donors contributed toward the goal, and that the school—located in Providence, Rhode Island—...
Amid America’s colossal student debt problem, an Ivy League school is providing an example of how institutions can help.
Beginning next school year, Brown University will eliminate all student loans in its undergraduate financial aid packages, replacing them with scholarships. Following a $30 million fundraising effort launched in September, Brown administrators announced this week that 2,087 donors contributed toward the goal, and that the school—located in Providence, Rhode Island—...
Brown University announced Thursday that it will no longer provide loans, only grants, in an effort to help students graduate with less debt.
Starting in the fall of 2018, all students who receive financial aid from the Ivy League university will receive scholarships, which they don’t have to pay back.
The goal is to make the university more affordable and accessible, particularly to middle-income families, said Brown spokesman Brian Clark. The students who will most likely...
One of every seven adults in Washington owes money they borrowed to pay for college or career training, and taken all together, those borrowers owe more than $24 billion in student loans.
A report detailing student-loan indebtedness, released Thursday, forms the backdrop of a push by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson for legislation that would give college borrowers greater safeguards against deceptive loan practices. The bill, which died in the Senate after he requested it last...