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Report: Too Little Done to Encourage Income-Based Loan Repayment

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September 18, 2015

Many student loan borrowers who could qualify for the federal government's income-based repayment plans do not participate in them, and the Education Department has not done enough to make borrowers aware of their repayment options, the Government Accountability Office said in a report Thursday.

The Obama administration has worked hard in recent months to bolster the number of borrowers in its income-based repayment programs, which it has expanded and heavily promoted, and it reported some success last month. But the GAO report, which was requested by some Democratic members of Congress, said that fewer than one in seven holders of direct student loans were paying them back based on their income levels, while more than half were eligible for the programs that would allow them to do so.

Doug Lederman

Doug Lederman is editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed. He helps lead the news organization's editorial operations, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs and other features. Doug speaks widely about higher education, including on C-Span and National Public Radio and at meetings and on campuses around the country, and his work has appeared in The New York Times and USA Today, among other publications. Doug was managing editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education from 1999 to 2003. Before that, Doug had worked at The Chronicle since 1986 in a variety of roles, first as an athletics reporter and editor. He has won three National Awards for Education Reporting from the Education Writers Association, including one in 2009 for a series of Inside Higher Ed articles he co-wrote on college rankings. He began his career as a news clerk at The New York Times. He grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and graduated in 1984 from Princeton University. Doug lives with his wife, Kate Scharff, in Bethesda, Md.