Georgia borrowers now owe $10.95 billion in defaulted student loans, giving the state the fifth-highest amount of defaulted student debt by dollar value in the country. Nearly 400,000 Georgia residents are not paying their loans, according to U.S. Department of Education data, as the fallout from the end of pandemic-era payment pauses continues to ripple through the state's colleges and universities.
The figures were first reported by WSB-TV, whose review of federal data found that Georgia trails only Texas, California, Florida and New York in total defaulted student debt. Texas leads the nation with $19.78 billion in defaulted loans, followed by California at $17.31 billion, Florida at $14.6 billion and New York at $12.9 billion. By comparison, Ohio sits at $10.2 billion, Pennsylvania at $8.85 billion, North Carolina at $7.8 billion, Illinois at $7.5 billion and Michigan at $7.4 billion, underscoring how far ahead of the middle of the pack Georgia's per-borrower debt burden has pushed the state.
Nationally, more than nine million borrowers are in default on their student loans, according to an Associated Press analysis, with roughly 9.5 million in default overall and about one in five borrowers currently in that status. Borrowers typically enter default after missing payments for nine consecutive months, per the AP's reporting, and U.S. Department of Education data shows nearly 900,000 additional borrowers are close to crossing that threshold.
Which Georgia Schools Have the Worst Nonpayment Rates
Institution-by-institution nonpayment data, current as of May 2026 according to the U.S. Department of Education, shows default and nonpayment rates across Georgia higher education ranging from 4% to 48%. The struggles are especially acute at some of the state's smaller and historically Black institutions. Morris Brown College posted the highest nonpayment rate in the state at 48% among its 200 evaluated borrowers, while Paine College recorded a 47% rate among 900 evaluated borrowers.
Savannah State University reported a 36% nonpayment rate among 7,100 evaluated borrowers, and Brewton Parker College and Fort Valley State University each posted 38% and 34% rates, respectively, among their evaluated borrower pools. South Georgia State College and Gordon State College also topped 30%, at 35% and 34%. Larger institutions fared better but still carry substantial numbers: Georgia State University, the state's largest evaluated pool at 51,200 borrowers, reported a 20% nonpayment rate, while Kennesaw State University's 36,100 evaluated borrowers carried a 15% rate.
At the other end of the spectrum, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology each posted a 4% nonpayment rate, the lowest in the state, among 11,100 and 9,700 evaluated borrowers respectively. The University of Georgia reported a 6% rate among 25,200 evaluated borrowers. Clark Atlanta University, meanwhile, reported a 26% nonpayment rate among 12,000 evaluated borrowers, and Morehouse College posted 24% among 5,200 evaluated borrowers.
Why So Many Georgia Borrowers Fell Behind
Georgia ranked among the top five states for student loans in default as of March 2026, according to federal data, but the state's per-borrower burden tells its own story. Georgia student loan borrowers carry an average federal debt balance of approximately $42,226 as of 2026, ranking the state third in the nation behind the District of Columbia and Maryland, according to SoFi. Georgia residents collectively hold more than $71.7 billion in cumulative federal student loan debt across roughly 1.6 million borrowers, according to CardRates.com data from late 2025.
Since the end of the pandemic-era payment pause and its one-year transition period, the number of Georgia borrowers more than 360 days delinquent grew by 191,000 as of August, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Much of that acceleration followed court decisions blocking federal income-driven repayment plans, which left many borrowers confused about their options just as mandatory payments resumed.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr played a direct role in that legal fight, joining multi-state litigation in June 2024 to block the Biden administration's Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, repayment plan, according to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. The SAVE plan was subsequently enjoined by federal courts, and in December 2025 the U.S. Department of Education reached a proposed settlement with the state of Missouri to officially dismantle it. That settlement requires more than seven million borrowers nationwide who were enrolled in SAVE to transition to alternative repayment plans starting in mid-2026, a shift Hoodline previously reported would force borrowers to pick a new plan within a 90-day window or risk being moved into standard repayment or default.
Federal Shakeup Adds to Borrower Confusion
The administrative landscape shifted again in March, when the U.S. Department of Education signed an interagency agreement transferring operational control over the federal government's defaulted student loan portfolio to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. That portfolio represents roughly $180 billion in debt across nearly nine million borrowers nationwide, part of a broader effort to streamline collections as the Education Department pares down its operations.
The Education Department had temporarily delayed involuntary collection actions in January 2026, halting planned administrative wage garnishments and tax refund offsets while federal repayment options were restructured. That pause was meant to give defaulted borrowers time to evaluate new consolidation and rehabilitation options, but it also added another layer of uncertainty for Georgia borrowers already navigating the SAVE plan's collapse. Nationally, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that the student loan delinquency rate reached 10.3% of balances 90 or more days overdue in the first quarter of 2026, with roughly 2.6 million defaulted borrowers transferred to default resolution in that quarter alone, following the resumption of mandatory credit bureau reporting.
Lower-Income Students Face Steeper Debt Loads
The burden is not evenly distributed among Georgia's college graduates. Research published in November 2025 found that Pell Grant recipients at University System of Georgia institutions graduate with higher debt than their peers, with bachelor's degree holders who received Pell Grants borrowing $26,863 on average compared to $23,395 for non-Pell graduates, according to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. That disparity helps explain why default rates run higher at institutions serving larger shares of lower-income and first-generation students.
Georgia has taken enforcement action against loan servicers before. In 2022, the state secured $118 million in student loan debt relief and restitution through a $1.85 billion multi-state settlement led by Attorney General Carr with loan servicer Navient over allegations of deceptive servicing practices, according to the Office of the Attorney General of Georgia. That case remains a reminder that servicer conduct, not just borrower circumstance, has long contributed to repayment confusion across the state.
