Just Released: New York State’s Community Colleges are Successfully Partnering with Employers

Jaison R. Abel, Tony Davis, Richard Deitz, and Edison Reyes



Community colleges frequently work with local employers to help shape the training of students and incumbent workers. This type of engagement has become an increasingly important strategy for community colleges to help students acquire the right skills for available jobs, and also helps local employers find and retain workers with the training they need. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York conducted a survey of community colleges in New York State with the goal of documenting the amount and types of these kinds of activities taking place. Our report, Employer Engagement by Community Colleges in New York State, summarizes the findings of our survey.

Education’s Role in Earnings, Employment, and Economic Mobility

Rajashri Chakrabarti and Michelle Jiang



Amid dialogue about the soaring student loan burden, questions arise about how educational characteristics (school type, selectivity, and major) affect disparities in post-college labor market outcomes. In this post, we specifically explore the impact of such school and major choices on employment, earnings, and upward economic mobility. Insight into determinants of economic disparity is key for understanding long-term consumption and inequality patterns. In addition, this gives us a window into factors that could be used to ameliorate income inequality and promote economic mobility.

Are Student Loan Defaults Cyclical? It Depends

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Nicole Gorton, Michelle Jiang, and Wilbert van de Klaauw



This post is the second in a two-part series on student loan default behavior. In the first post, we studied how educational characteristics (school type and selectivity, graduation, and major) and family background relate to the incidence of student loan default. In this post, we investigate whether default behavior has varied across cohorts of borrowers as the labor market evolved over time. Specifically, does the ability of student loan holders to repay their loans vary with the state of the labor market? Does the type of education these students received make any difference to this relationship?

Who Is More Likely to Default on Student Loans?

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Nicole Gorton, Michelle Jiang, and Wilbert van der Klaauw



This post seeks to understand how educational characteristics (school type and selectivity, graduation status, major) and family background relate to the incidence of student loan default. Student indebtedness has grown substantially, increasing by 170 percent between 2006 and 2016. In addition, the fraction of students who default on those loans has grown considerably. Of students who left college in 2010 and 2011, 28 percent defaulted on their student loans within five years, compared with 19 percent of those who left school in 2005 and 2006. Since defaulting on student loans can have serious consequences for credit scores and, by extension, the ability to purchase a home and take out other loans, it’s critical to understand how college and family characteristics correspond to default rates.

Hey, Economist! Is Now a Good Time to Be Graduating from College?

A Conversation with Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz



With the 2017 college graduation season in full swing, we thought it would be helpful to take stock of the job prospects for recent college graduates. Is now a good time to be graduating from college? Publications editor Trevor Delaney caught up with Jaison Abel and Richard Deitz, two economists in our Research and Statistics Group, to discuss some of their work on the labor market for recent college graduates.

Diplomas to Doorsteps: Education, Student Debt, and Homeownership

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Nicole Gorton, and Wilbert van der Klaauw



Evidence overwhelmingly shows that the average earnings premium to having a college education is high and has risen over the past several decades, in part because of a decline in real average earnings for those without a college degree. In addition to high private returns, there are substantial social returns to having a well-educated citizenry and workforce. A new development that may have important longer-term implications for education investment and for the broader economy is a significant change in the financing of higher education. State funding has declined markedly over the past two decades, a trend that has coincided with a significant increase in college tuition. To cover the rising cost of college, students and families have increased their reliance on student loans, funding a greater share of an increasing overall college cost. While the federal student loan program has undoubtedly helped mitigate the impact of higher costs on college access and enrollment, more and more students now leave college with higher amounts of debt. Given these trends, it is critical to understand whether holding student debt has affected young Americans’ later life outcomes, such as homeownership.

At the N.Y. Fed: Press Briefing on Household Borrowing with Close-Up on Student Debt

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw



An examination of recent developments in household borrowing was the focus of a press briefing held this morning at the New York Fed. President William Dudley offered opening remarks on the latest developments, then Bank economists briefed the press on their analysis of household indebtedness, placing a spotlight on student loans. Their research is based on the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel—which is based on Equifax credit report data—as well as data from the National Student Clearinghouse. The presentation contained three components: (1) an analysis how aggregate household debt today differs from its 2008 peak, (2) new evidence on student debt growth, delinquency and repayment, and (3) an investigation of the relationship between homeownership, student debt, and educational attainment.

At the N.Y. Fed: Convening on the Evolution of Work

Nora Fitzpatrick, Laura Pilossoph, Anika Pratt, and Aysegul Sahin



The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently hosted “The Evolution of Work,” a conference that brought together thought leaders from academia, government, industry, labor, and the nonprofit sector to explore how the nature of work is evolving, including the expanding role of technology, shifts in employee work arrangements and employer-employee relationships, and the effects of these changes on workforce and community development strategies. The gathering was cosponsored by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Freelancers Union.

Who Falters at Student Loan Payback Time?

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Michael Lovenheim, and Kevin Morris

Editor’s note: The labels for “Elite private” and “Non-elite private, not-for-profit” institutions in the charts have been corrected; they were initially transposed. We regret the error. (September 12, 12:45 p.m.)



This is the final post in a four-part series examining the evolution of enrollment, student loans, graduation and default in the higher education market over the course of the past fifteen years. In the first post, we found a marked increase in enrollment of 35 percent between 2000 and 2015, led mostly by the for-profit sector—which increased enrollment by 177 percent. The second post showed that these new enrollees were quite different from the traditional enrollees. Yesterday’s post demonstrated an unprecedented increase in loan origination amounts during this period—nearly tripling between 2000 and 2015. This surge was driven most prominently by a massive increase in the number of borrowers in the public community college sector and the private for-profit college sector. Given the large increase in the borrower pool and loan originations, it is paramount to understand the consequences of these changes for the student loan default rate. This post aims to do just that. We focus on three-year cohort default rates reported by the United States Department of Education. The three-year cohort default rate is defined as the percentage of a school's borrowers who enter repayment during a particular federal fiscal year—running from October 1 to September 30—and default prior to the end of the second following fiscal year. Most federal loans enter default when payments are more than 270 days past due.

The Changing Role of Community-College and For-Profit-College Borrowers in the Student Loan Market

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Michael Lovenheim, and Kevin Morris

Editor’s note: The chart sources cited in this post have been corrected. (September 9, 12:55 p.m.)



In the first post in this series, we characterized the rapid transformation of the higher education market over the 2000-2015 period, a transformation that was led by explosive growth of the for-profit sector of higher education. In the second post, we found that most of this growth was driven by nontraditional students entering these institutions. Given this growth and the marked change in student composition, it is important to understand what impact these patterns might have on student loan originations, student loan volume, and the borrower pool in the various sectors of higher education. While a causal analysis is beyond the scope of this post, we instead examine descriptive patterns in these critical postsecondary outcomes. Was the growth in for-profit enrollment associated with a higher incidence of student loans? Were for-profit students, the main contributors of this growth, more or less likely to take student loans, and were they more or less likely to originate larger student loans? How about community-college borrowers, especially since community college enrollment increased noticeably over the period? This post focuses on these questions.