<prompt> Human: I believe this is behind a paywall... here are the interesting nuggets: The number of Americans severely behind on payments on federal student loans reached roughly 4.6 million in the third quarter, a doubling from four years ago, despite a historically long stretch of U.S. job creation and steady economic growth... The governments student-loan portfolio now totals 1.37 trillion. That figure includes debt in repayment; debt for which borrowers arent required to be paying down because they are in school or have otherwise been granted temporary reprieves; and debt from an older program that guaranteed loans made by private lenders... Its kind of phenomenal given all the tools we have at this point to avoid default that this many people are still winding up in default, said Clare McCann, an education-policy analyst at New America, a center-left think tank... In some ways, the outlook for the federal student loan program has improved. The rise in default in part reflects an overall increase in Americans entering the repayment cycle. As a share of all borrowers in repayment, new defaults fell in the third quarter compared with a year earlier.Student loans are making up an ever-increasing portion of the national debt, and an increasing number defaults is not such a great thing, even though the default rate is lower...Assistant: With IBR and PAYE, the only excuse for default on a Federal loan is laziness or ignorance. There are plans out there to prevent this if people would just read the damn documentation for the money they signed for.Human: I think one of the issues there is that you need to sign a bunch of forms when you initially sign up for your loan, when most people are 18 years old, but I dont remember doing anything when I was getting ready to graduate.You could probably stave off a LOT of defaults by making people review their options at graduation time and six months later. So much is happening when you graduate that student loans tend to fall by the wayside. Six months later, you should be far more stable and in a position to processremember the options available to you.  <response>: Everyone who receives federal loans receives all of this info when they leave school. The problem I think is that so many folks are so terrified of anything to do with money and finance that they shut down and tune out anyone that tries to help them. How many threads on this subreddit start with, when I was young and dumb I ran up a bunch of debt and basically hid under my bed for five years while it exploded over me...?I think, more than just raw information, we need to empower people to think of their financial lives as something that they can control. A lot of the problems that people face are less about money and more about attitude; they are too afraid or embarrassed or panicky to ask for help or do any research and by the time they finally start it ends up being a lot more work to resolve than it would ordinarily have been. 