Maine students attending private, for-profit colleges are quicker to borrow and slower to repay their student loans when compared to the their counterparts across the country, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.
The North Carolina-based debt-monitoring group reviewed recent data from the U.S. Department of Education and found that on average, 75 percent of Maine’s for-profit students borrowed compared with 41 percent and 66 percent of students in public schools and private schools, respectively.
Robin Howarth, a senior researcher at CRL, says students attending for-profit schools in Maine are forced to borrow more and face bleaker employment options.
“At the for-profit, for degrees that are equivalent to say a community college degree, you’ll see individuals borrowing double what a student would borrow at a community college and having a very difficult time repaying after they graduate or withdraw because generally their employment prospects are not very good,” she says.
Howarth says for-profit students repay their student debt at only about two-thirds the rate of public school peers, and one-half the rate of private school peers.