Student loan policy has become a prominent issue in recent years as students are increasingly having difficulty meeting repayment obligations. Student loan delinquency rates have nearly doubled over the past decade nationwide, and default rates on federally supported loan programs reached their highest levels in more than 15 years just a few years ago. Compared with other types of credit such as mortgages, however, existing research on student loans is less conclusive in establishing the determinants of delinquency and default. The goal of the 2015 PCC conference on student loan repayment was threefold: to revisit the existing research on student loan repayment, to outline the policy-relevant research questions remaining to be answered, and to examine our capacity to answer these questions given available and emerging data sources.

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