FSA has posted a series of updates to its data center, the centralized online source for data and other information about FSA programs and operations. This update refreshes more than 70 quarterly application, disbursement, and portfolio reports to include data through June 30, 2025.
Access the data center here.
Key Findings in the Quarterly Reports
FSA proactively posts these reports to help ensure consistency, increase accountability and transparency, and establish self-service opportunities for interested stakeholders. While not exhaustive, the information below provides a snapshot of key findings in our most recent set of reports.
Outstanding Loan Portfolio Overview
Today, the outstanding federal student loan portfolio includes 42.3 million recipients with federal student loans totaling $1.67 trillion, which represents a three-percent-dollar increase from June 2024. The Direct Loan portfolio is 90% of the outstanding loan portfolio while the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) portfolio represents less than 10%, and Perkins Loans comprise less than one-fifth of one percent. The federally managed portfolio—which includes FFEL and Perkins Program loans owned by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and Direct Loans—is now more than $1.58 trillion, representing 95% of the total portfolio.
Focus on the Federally Managed Portfolio
ED is directly responsible for managing 40.3 million recipient accounts with outstanding loans totaling $1.58 trillion across the Direct Loan and ED-held FFEL portfolio. More than 18.3 million recipients, or almost half of the 40.3 recipients, have at least one loan in a current repayment or delinquency status. These loans total approximately $600 billion or 38% of the total $1.58 trillion portfolio.
As of June 2025, 10.3 million recipients (or more than a quarter of all recipients) have at least one loan in a forbearance status. This includes more than seven million borrowers in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan forbearance due to litigation. As a result, forbearance usage in the federally managed portfolio has increased, year-over-year, from $178 billion to $582 billion. Forbearance peaked during the payment pause at $1.14 trillion in June 2023 but was $133 billion prior to the pause in February 2020.
More than three million recipients (nine percent of total recipients) have at least one loan in deferment, totaling nearly $145 billion. Since most deferments are education-related, it is not unusual for many of these borrowers to also have at least one loan in an in-school status. About 13% of recipients have a loan in an in-school status, while three percent of recipients have a loan in grace. Collectively, the balances across in-school and in-grace statuses represent just eight percent of Direct Loan and ED-held FFEL outstanding balances.
Approximately 5.3 million ED-serviced borrowers with nearly $117 billion in outstanding federal student loans are in default as of June 2025, representing seven percent of the total $1.58 trillion portfolio. While no new borrowers have defaulted since March 2020 due to the payment pause, many delinquent borrowers are in danger of defaulting in the coming months.
Delinquencies in the Federally Managed Servicing Portfolio
Although the payment pause ended in September 2023, the on-ramp program continued to regularly cure delinquent borrowers’ accounts through October 2024. As a result, a significant number of borrowers are required to make payments and facing the consequences of non-payment for the first time in several years.
The June 2025 reports show that more than 65% of ED-serviced recipients with loans in active repayment are current (on time or less than 31 days delinquent) on their federal student loan payments. Active repayment only considers those whose loans are in a repayment status and excludes borrowers in other statuses that would not require a monthly payment. However, this means that 34.4% of recipients, or more than six million recipients, are more than 30 days delinquent on their accounts. This includes more than four million recipients in late-stage delinquency who are at risk of defaulting in the next six months. Last month, ED also published nonpayment rates to help postsecondary institutions understand their borrowers’ risk of default, specifically for borrowers who first entered repayment during the payment pause.
A final on-ramp in October 2024 cured all ED-serviced delinquencies of more than 30 days. With most of the first, post-on-ramp payment due dates set after the end of November 2024, most loans could not reach 90 days delinquent until March 2025. However, because the final on-ramp did not cure loans less than a month past-due, some loans were reaching 90 days delinquent in late December. Additionally, more than seven million borrowers with loans in the SAVE Plan are still in forbearance and are technically not required to pay; their loans cannot potentially become delinquent until several weeks after exiting the SAVE forbearance.
By total dollar balance, the active repayment 31+ delinquency rate is 29.5% by total dollar balance, compared to 12.7% in December 2019. December 2019 was at the tail end of a multi-year decline in delinquency rates, primarily due to increasing portfolio quality and potentially due–in a lesser way—to the improving economy since the debts of the great recession earlier in the decade.
Income-Driven Repayment Usage
More than 12.7 million Direct Loan and ED-serviced FFEL borrowers in repayment, deferment, or forbearance statuses are enrolled in an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan. This includes approximately seven million borrowers who remained in the SAVE forbearance due to litigation as of June 2025. In terms of borrowers, approximately 39% of the ED-serviced repayment plan universe is in an IDR plan (based on unduplicated borrowers in repayment, deferment, and forbearance), a decline from 40% in June 2024.
Over the last year, the total of ED-serviced (Direct Loan + ED-serviced FFEL) balances in IDR plans has increased from $733 to $740 billion. In terms of dollars (total balance), 56% of the ED-serviced (Direct Loan servicing + ED-serviced FFEL) repayment plan universe is in an IDR plan, a decline from 58% in June 2024.
New Application Volume and Aid Disbursements
As of June 2025, more than 13.4 million Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) forms were submitted for the 2025–26 school year. This represents a 14% increase in applications submitted in the previous cycle through June 30. The 2024–25 application cycle closed in June 2025, ending with nearly 17.7 million application submissions, which represents a one-percent decrease from the 2023–24 cycle. The 2026–27 FAFSA beta site launched earlier this month. For additional information about the 2026–27 FAFSA beta, improvements, known issues, and helpful resources, visit FAFSA Central.
Preliminary disbursement data is available for the 2024–25 award year which ended June 30, 2025. While the preliminary data shows that students received $37.9 billion in Federal Pell Grants and $81.3 billion in Direct Loans, these numbers are expected to increase as FSA receives additional postsecondary institutional reporting and FSA updates posted reports. Reported loan volume usually significantly increases within the first six months after the end of an award year, while Pell Grant disbursements typically have modest increases. When comparing the preliminary 2024–25 disbursement data to the preliminary 2023–24 disbursement data, there has been a 23% increase in Pell Grant disbursements and a three percent increase in Direct Loan disbursements.
Tracking Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Borrower Defense to Repayment
To increase transparency, ED has resumed its Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and borrower defense to repayment reports. The PSLF report includes application submission and outcome data, as well as discharge information for borrowers meeting PSLF requirements. The borrower defense reports, which have not been published since January 2023, provide application status information by either the school listed on the application or the borrower’s state of residence. These are data elements commonly requested under the Freedom of Information Act; proactively posting them to the FSA data center will increase self-service opportunities for interested stakeholders.
Key Items to Note While Reviewing These Reports
To accurately interpret the data, please note the following:
- While student loans are traditionally highly cyclical in nature, recent data is not comparable to prior periods due to the three-and-a-half-year payment pause coupled with the implementation of programs such as the on-ramp and Fresh Start.
- In the portfolio reports, recipient counts are based at the loan level. For that reason, recipients may be counted multiple times across varying loan statuses. For example, a recipient with one loan in deferment and one loan in forbearance would be counted once in each category. A recipient with two loans in the same status would only be counted once in that category.
- Active repayment includes all current and delinquent borrowers whose accounts are currently serviced by federal loan servicers. Borrowers with loans in a grace, school, deferment, forbearance, bankruptcy, or disability status are not expected to make payments and are not included in this calculation.
- In the loan and grant reports, the first worksheet of the workbook shows the number of recipients and disbursements for the specified quarter, while the second tab shows the cumulative, award-year-to-date activity. The second worksheet of the award year’s fourth quarter report will show data for the full award year. Since the information is reported by specific loan type or grant program, a unique grant or loan recipient count is not available by school. Please note that since loan and grant reports are generally run shortly after the quarter’s end, initial runs often under-report activity because of institutions’ reporting delays and activity that occurs for the award year after the report run date (for example, summer disbursements).
The FSA data center was launched in 2009 to increase government transparency by proactively posting information useful to businesses, institutions, the media, and individuals.
SOURCE: (GENERAL-25-39) Federal Student Aid Posts Updated Reports to FSA Data Center