Protect Borrowers and The Century Foundation released a startling joint report revealing that over 40 percent of Americans would likely be denied access to loans from the vast majority of traditional private and state-affiliated lenders.
The report comes as the Department of Education implements unprecedented changes to the federal student loan program under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA), which limits how much students and families can borrow from the federal government while failing to reduce the cost of college or provide funds to fill gaps with grants. Proponents of the bill argued that reducing federal lending would lower college costs and the private market would cover any funding gaps students face. Our research directly rebuts these claims by showing that 40 percent of Americans, including a disproportionate amount of low-income students and students of color, are locked out of the traditional private student loan market. By forcing these students to depend upon an exclusionary private market, the changes Congress made in the OBBBA will force our most vulnerable students to either give up on higher education or take on even more expensive, predatory forms of debt to pay for college.
Read the Report: Access Denied: How 40% of Americans Are Locked Out of the Private Student Loan Market
Read the Press Release: New Study Warns that 40% of Americans—Including Nearly Two-Thirds of Pell Grant Recipients—Cannot Qualify for a Traditional Private Student Loan
Read the Blog: Access Denied: New Report Reveals 40% of Americans Are Locked Out of the Private Student Loan Market
Read the Report’s One-Pager: See here