NEARLY 7 MILLION STUDENT LOANS ARE IN DEFAULT

According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, nearly 7 million Americans have gone at least a year without making a payment on their federal student loans, a high level of default that suggests that there is a widening swath of those unable or unwilling to pay back their school debt, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. As of July, 6.9 million Americans with student loans hadn't sent a payment to the government in at least 360 days, quarterly data from the Education Department showed this past week. That was up 6 percent, or 400,000 borrowers, from a year earlier. That translates into about 17 percent of all borrowers with federal loans being severely delinquent. Millions of other borrowers are months behind but haven't hit the 360-day threshold that the government defines as a default.