The US Student Loan Implosion

The Consumer Federation of America recently put out a press release that reports that they've found that 1.1 million student loan borrowers in the United States have gone 270 or more days without making payments on their Federal Direct Student Loans, with more than $137 billion worth of the loans issued by the U.S. government now qualifying as being in default by that standard. Data from the CFA's press release has made the rounds among multiple news outlets, but we have a pretty basic question: Are those big numbers?