Thread regarding Zenith Education Group layoffs

While outcomes are likely to improve for today’s new borrowers, concerns about the student loan program are likely to persist. Many institutions continue to make high-risk loans to students on behalf of the federal taxpayer in return for educational programs that often do not result in a degree or do not result in a degree that leads to a high-paying job. Recent work has pointed out that unqualified aid, particularly aid limited only by costs of attendance, is contributing to loan burdens by increasing students’ educational costs and their need to borrow (Cellini and Goldin 2014; Lucca, Nadauld and Shen 2015; Turner 2014). And our work suggests that weak economic outcomes and poor loan performance are concentrated in certain sectors where institutions have not been held accountable for the outcomes of their programs either through market mechanisms or regulatory oversight. Finally, a fraction of existing borrowers, mostly non-traditional borrowers, appear mired in a system where they are unlikely to have the resources to repay their loans in full, and yet generally have no way to have those loans discharged