Cal State Dominguez Hills Students Lead in Defaults

For the second consecutive year, Cal State Dominguez Hills reported the highest default rate among California’s public universities under the most popular federally guaranteed student-loan program, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

The university posted a default rate of 19.7% for 1988, meaning that nearly one in five students who was to have started repaying a loan in fiscal 1988 failed to make payments that year or the next. About 140 federally guaranteed loans worth more than $708,000 are considered to be in default at the school.

Officials at the Carson campus say that the school’s default rate is due in large part to the fact that many of the borrowers are low-income, first-generation college students who sometimes do not complete their studies.