Center for American Progress

Overall Mission

The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan institute whose mission is to provide life-changing ideas, leadership, and action. Their focal point is shared prosperity, which includes issues of economic mobility, environmental health, strength from diversity, and peace.

What Ididio is sharing from the Center

In August 2018, the New York Times published the article The Student Debt Problem is Worse Than We Imagined, which was based on student loan information the Center obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The data for this article follows a cohort of students who departed their college or university in 2012 and who had federal loans. The Center shared their study, including the new data they compiled, in this article by Ben Miller. Prior to this work, the best student loan data available was from CollegeScoreCard, which shares default and repayment rates at various time intervals. This new work gives us a snapshot of the full range of loan standing for a cohort of students five years after leaving schools. We appreciate the context this snapshot provides, and their work has become our primary reference in considering the well-being of alumni where student loans are concerned.

Finding the data

We downloaded the data cited above on September 5, 2018.