What is the year or cohort to which the loan repayment rates refer on the College Scorecard as shown today? My institution shows a repayment rate of 68% but there is no year of reference.
2 Answers
Presently, the collegescorecard.ed.gov utilizes data from 1996--2014. The measure you're referring to, "Students Paying Down Their Debt," is defined as "The share of students who have repaid at least $1 of the principal balance on their federal loans within 3 years of leaving school." Therefore this would apply to those who left between 1996--2011, as the data for 2015--present haven't been released or collected yet.
My guess is that the measure is a time-independent average, or an average with more recent years being weighted heavier than earlier years.
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You can also download the data yourself on collegescorecard.ed.gov/data. Jan 18, 2017 at 20:11
The source of the metric is the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS). The current data are from fiscal years 2014 and 2015 (this metric uses a pooled cohort for students repaying during 3-year periods of FY 2011-2014 and FY 2012-2015). This information is included in the Scorecard Data Dictionary (https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/assets/CollegeScorecardDataDictionary.xlsx) in the tab labeled "most recent cohort map."
