Education Commons^™

Do You Know What You Owe? Students' Understanding Of Their Student Loans, Emily A. Andruska, Jeanne M. Hogarth, Cynthia Needles Fletcher, Gregory R. Forbes, Darin R. Wohlgemuth

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Using a data set that augments a student survey with administrative data from the Iowa State University Office of Financial Aid, the authors posed two questions: Do students know whether they have student loans? Do students know how much they owe on outstanding student loans? We used logistic and ordered logit regressions to answer these questions. Results suggest that although the majority of students are aware that they owe on student loans, many underestimate the amount they owe. One eighth of students in the current study reported no student debt when, in fact, they had a loan. Over a quarter …