Jul 26, 2026 · 24 min · 15 segments
As student loan defaults continue to rise, millions of borrowers are facing growing financial pressure while new borrowing limits and policy changes reshape the future of higher education financing…
Trey EvansHost
And this comes on the heels of a recent report that came out from the AP, the Associated Press, where they talked about the skyrocketing amount of student loans that, excuse me, the skyrocketing default of student loans that is occurring.
And the title of this article is the, uh, as defaults on student loan surge, millions are trying to get their lives back on track.
And in this article, they talked about several different cases of individuals who have had or have student loans that are dealing with crippling debt and Other issues that have forced some to file for bankruptcy and even worse in terms of defaulting on home payments and car payments, things of that nature.
Just reading quickly from the article here, it says across the country, the number of borrowers with defaulted student loans jumped by more than 4.2 million from April 2025 to March 26th.
According to the AP analysis said this surge includes many who went off track in 2024 when loan payments started coming in or started coming due again after pandemic era freezes.
You have several million people who are in default of their loans and it is only increased and getting worse.
I'm looking at a graph here as well from AP where they show that After September of 2024, the number went from six million people or six and a half million people that were in default to today, where it's at nine point five million people are in default.
And the reason for that, as it was mentioned in the article, has a lot to do with the pandemic freezes that were put into place to steer off, if you will, student loans.
while the pandemic was in place matter of fact this was talked about recently on a um during a morning during cbs morning news they talked about this as well they talked about why this is occurring so let me play a piece from that this is um danielle douglas who's a reporter for the washington post and she explains uh some of the default issues and why that's occurring so let me play that then i want to talk about some of these limits that are being put in place for the 26 27 season that are going from there but this is from cbs morning news
And this comes on the heels of a recent report that came out from the AP, the Associated Press, where they talked about the skyrocketing amount of student loans that, excuse me, the skyrocketing default of student loans that is occurring.
And the title of this article is the, uh, as defaults on student loan surge, millions are trying to get their lives back on track.
And in this article, they talked about several different cases of individuals who have had or have student loans that are dealing with crippling debt and Other issues that have forced some to file for bankruptcy and even worse in terms of defaulting on home payments and car payments, things of that nature.
Just reading quickly from the article here, it says across the country, the number of borrowers with defaulted student loans jumped by more than 4.2 million from April 2025 to March 26th.
According to the AP analysis said this surge includes many who went off track in 2024 when loan payments started coming in or started coming due again after pandemic era freezes.
You have several million people who are in default of their loans and it is only increased and getting worse.
I'm looking at a graph here as well from AP where they show that After September of 2024, the number went from six million people or six and a half million people that were in default to today, where it's at nine point five million people are in default.
And the reason for that, as it was mentioned in the article, has a lot to do with the pandemic freezes that were put into place to steer off, if you will, student loans.
while the pandemic was in place matter of fact this was talked about recently on a um during a morning during cbs morning news they talked about this as well they talked about why this is occurring so let me play a piece from that this is um danielle douglas who's a reporter for the washington post and she explains uh some of the default issues and why that's occurring so let me play that then i want to talk about some of these limits that are being put in place for the 26 27 season that are going from there but this is from cbs morning news
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