Federal Student Aid posted its quarterly portfolio update on September 22, 2026, and the data through June 30 shows student loan defaults still rising. The number of borrowers with defaulted loans in the federally managed portfolio grew by about 400,000 during the quarter to more than 9.3 million. Those borrowers owe $234 billion, roughly 14% of the $1.64 trillion portfolio the Department of Education manages directly.

That total now sits above the 9 million figure cited just last week when senators pressed the Education Department over its $1 billion servicing fund.

The six-month trend is ugly. When FSA released its December 2025 numbers in March, 7.7 million borrowers held $180 billion in defaulted federal student loans. Compared with that report, the defaulted portfolio has added roughly 1.6 million borrowers and $54 billion in the first half of 2026.

The overall portfolio tracked on the FSA Data Center now covers 42.3 million recipients and more than $1.7 trillion, up nearly 4% in dollars from June 2025, and student loan default accounts for a growing slice of it.