A Look at Federal Loans for Students

We hear all the time about the student loan bubble. Is it a problem? Like most things, it depends on how you look at it. Here is data viewed from a very high level, without the benefit of being able to drill down.

It shows the status of the government's student loan portfolio, broken out by the older FFEL programs and the currently existing Direct Loan Program; the FFEL loans are older, while the Direct Loans are a mixture of old and new.

Some interesting trends appear, even over relatively short periods of time. What do you see?

And, if we had access to better, more granular data, what would you like to see?

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