Former Missouri college students are doing a little better at paying off their loans. Almost 82,000 Missourians have those loans for their educations at 164 schools.  More than 77,000 of them are current with their payments.  But more than 4500 are at least nine months behind. 

That’s a delinquency rate of 5.8-percent…down a couple of tenths from a year ago and more than a full point below the national average.

Department of Higher Education spokesman Kathy Love says one factor in hat drop is the grants given to higher education institutions.  The money is used by the schools to teach financial responsibility classes to students, showing them how to manage their money and to limit their debts.

The department calculates the average student debt is 19-thousand dollars upon graduation.  Love says the department does its best to track down those in default and will work with them to get the payments going again.

 Bob Priddy & Kathy Love talk defaults 8:47 mp3