Thousands in Tarrant County are behind on student loans. She nearly joined them 4%
By Dang Le3%
7/30/2026, 3:43:42 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Optimism Bias, and Representativeness Heuristic, with Post Hoc (False Cause) as the most egregious example at 9.6% saturation with 213 hits. Analysis detected 1,104 faulty-reasoning hits from 2,224 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 15.3% and a BS Rank of 4% (22,993 of 23,850 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 96.40% of the article peer group.
Fort Worth resident Jill Bold graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2022 with a journalism degree.
Bold ignored payment notices on a $1,000 student loan debt in the early 2000s and, without her husband’s paycheck, would have done the same with later loans.
(Christine Vo | Fort Worth Report)
J ill Bold divides her life into fortunate and unfortunate parts.
Bold, 43, considers it fortunate that she lives in Fort Worth’s Lakes of River Trails neighborhood with her husband, Randy, and their daughter.
His steady job ensures there is money in the bank when Bold’s roughly $240 combined monthly bill comes due on four federal student loans.
Much of Bold’s financial security depends on Randy’s paycheck.
Bold returned to college in her 30s and graduated from the University of Texas in Arlington in 2022 with a 4.0 GPA.
Her degrees led to higher-paying jobs, but health problems and an unpredictable job market kept her from steady employment.
“If it weren’t for my husband, a default would have absolutely happened by January of 2026,” Bold said.
borrowers who attended Tarrant County colleges and universities were at least 90 days behind
borrowers who attended Tarrant County for-profit schools were at least 90 days late
of federal student-loan borrowers in Texas were in default
in federal student-loan debt was owed by Texans in default
Source: Associated Press analysis of Federal Student Aid data and AP’s Texas institution/county join
Many others have had no such luck.
An Associated Press analysis of federal data found that about 19,000 borrowers — about 1 in 5 – who attended Tarrant County colleges were at least 90 days behind on their federal student loans as of May — a strain that loan specialists expect to continue as pandemic-era repayment protections unwind.
Tarrant County College had the highest rate among local major public and nonprofit private institutions.
More than 1 in 4 borrowers — about 3,500 people — who recently attended the community college were behind on loan payments, according to the analysis.
The AP analyzed borrowers whose loans entered repayment from Jan. 2020 through May 2025, usually after they graduated, left school or dropped below half-time enrollment.
The May 2026 school-level data counted borrowers who were at least 90 days late on payment, including those in default.
Most federal student loans enter default after about 270 days, or nine months, without a payment.
The data does not explain why borrowers fell behind, whether they completed their programs or how student populations differ among schools.
By March, about 878,000 Texans had gone more than 360 days without making a payment on their college loans, nearly twice as many as in Sept.
2025.
More than 1 in 5 federal borrowers in the state were in default, owing a total of about $19.8 billion.
Betsy Mayotte, president and founder of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, tied the surge to the end of pandemic-era protections.
The federal government paused most payments for more than three years, then provided a one-year “on-ramp” that prevented missed payments from leading to default.
Once those protections ended, missed payments again accumulated toward default.
From July to Oct. 2025, the national number of borrowers in default jumped from 5.33 to 8.82 million.
About 9.5 million are now in default.
The pause also disrupted payment routines as household costs changed, Mayotte said.
Court rulings and shifting federal policies made repayment harder to navigate.
“It’s just sort of been a domino effect since then,” she said.
Why borrowers from some schools struggle more
In fall 2000, Bold borrowed $2,500 to study dance at the University of North Texas.
She was 18.
Her divorced parents had no college degrees then and earned little, but the federal aid formula determined they should be able to cover her college costs.
Despite a 3.67 high school GPA, she received no scholarships.
By her second semester, Bold had enough professional dance work that she decided to leave school without a degree.
Within two years, she married, began raising her son and stopped thinking of returning to college.
Her mother repaid a $1,500 loan they had cosigned.
Bold ignored the remaining $1,000 loan, discarding notices unopened.
The debt later disappeared from her credit report, but she doesn’t know what happened to it.
“I had no idea what I was walking into,” she said, referring to those old loans.
Borrowers with the smallest balances can be among those most likely to default, Mayotte said.
“Those are people that have debt and no degree, so they’re worse off than when they started,” she said.
Federal borrowers who left college without a degree or certificate were nearly seven times as likely to default within six years of enrolling as those who completed their course of study, according to American Council on Education research .
Differences in completion rates help explain why community colleges sometimes have higher nonpayment rates despite charging less, Mayotte said.
They serve more working parents, lower-income students and older adults balancing school, work and family.
Among borrowers at Texas public institutions included in AP’s analysis, 19% were late by at least 90 days.
TCC borrowers’ rate for late payments was 27%.
Other Texas community colleges had comparable or higher rates: The late payment rate was 31% at Dallas College and Houston City College, 27% at Collin College and North Central Texas College, and 25% at Weatherford College.
TCC CFO Pamela Anglin called the college’s rate concerning but cautioned that falling behind does not necessarily lead to default.
Using a separate federal measure that tracks borrowers for three years after they enter repayment, Anglin estimated that about half of those behind on payments would avoid default.
TCC could not immediately say how many affected borrowers earned a credential.
It counsels students before they borrow and as they leave, Anglin said.
“We like to see students get through two years at TCC debt-free, but some students need the loan help to be able to attend college, especially if they are working and raising a family while attending classes,” she said.
‘Some people just can’t get the money’
Nearly 20 years after leaving UNT, Bold tried college again.
She graduated debt-free from TCC in 2020 and transferred to UTA to study journalism.
She worked at a college newspaper while raising a teenage son and a baby daughter.
Her household income left her ineligible for need-based grants, Bold said.
Rather than draw down savings or investments, Bold and her husband chose a low-interest federal loan for each of her four semesters, betting on the possibility of debt forgiveness .
For-profit schools have the highest nonpayment rates
Nearly 2 in 5 borrowers who attended Texas for-profit schools were at least 90 days late, compared with about 1 in 5 borrowers from public and nonprofit private colleges in the analysis.
The three Tarrant County locations of the Ogle School, which teaches cosmetology, had a combined rate of about 40%.
Concorde Career College’s Grand Prairie campus also had a 40% rate, while The Culinary School of Fort Worth had a 36% rate.
Lower earnings in different lines of work offer one possible explanation for the default rate at some schools.
Graduates of the three Ogle campuses and DuVall’s School of Cosmetology in Bedford earned, on average, about $3,600 to $5,300 less than the median earnings of Texas high school graduates, according to an analysis of earnings data from Open Campus and The HEA Group.
Nationwide, AP identified 133 schools where more than half of recent borrowers were at least 90 days late.
Nearly all were for-profit schools, and more than half were barber or beauty schools.
As of July, she owed about $19,000.
Nonpayment rates were lower at local four-year universities than at two-year colleges and for-profit schools: 20% at Texas Wesleyan University, 14% at UTA, 8% at Texas Christian University and 2% at UNT Health Fort Worth.
Because UTA’s evaluated borrower pool was much larger, its rate translated to about 5,900 people — more than at any other local schools examined.
The data does not isolate the Fort Worth campuses of Tarleton State University or Texas A&M.
UTA officials said many borrowers represented by the data resumed payments after the pandemic-era pause ended.
Before payments restarted, the university hired an outside company to contact former students and explain the process and their repayment responsibilities.
About 25% of UTA’s full-time undergraduates use federal student loans.
“Our goal is to equip students with the knowledge and support needed to make informed financial decisions both during their time on campus and after they graduate,” the university said in a statement.
Bold’s post-UTA jobs paid more, starting at about $20 per hour, but her degree did not bring the steady career she’d expected.
About a year after graduation, a newsroom where she’d applied for work instituted a hiring freeze.
Bold later found full-time work in the artificial intelligence industry, but contracts there tend to disappear with little notice, she said.
The mortgage, car payments, insurance and her children’s needs come before student debt, she said.
With her husband’s pay and benefits, the couple can cover those must-haves as well as the debt.
“There’s just some people who have money and some people who don’t,” Bold said.
“And some people just can’t get the money, and it’s so unfortunate.
And sometimes, if you want to go do it, you have to just borrow the money.”
Mayotte said she has not seen repayment problems on this scale in more than two decades of her career.
She expects defaults to keep rising as more than 7.5 million borrowers must choose new repayment plans after nearly two years without required payments.
“I am hearing from quite a few borrowers that just can’t afford any of the options available to them,” Mayotte said.
When life takes over
Bold’s loans were manageable — until they weren’t.
Spine surgery in December brought more out-of-pocket costs.
After recovering, she returned to her remote position at Meta but in January, Bold was selected for a jury in a felony sexual assault trial expected to last a week.
It lasted a month.
Bold suffered a stroke during the trial’s fourth week that she attributed to daily exposure to graphic evidence and her untreated high blood pressure.
Months of recovery kept her from working as hospital bills piled up, atop the mortgage, car payments and other expenses.
Without her husband’s paycheck, Bold said, she would have returned to ignoring notices — just as she did two decades ago.
“I would never log in again.
I would never answer their calls.
I would let it default, and I would say, ‘There’s so much else in my life right now that I care about,’” she said.
What happens after default
Making student loans a low priority can make the debt more expensive, Mayotte said.
Default makes the full unpaid balance immediately due, damages credit and blocks access to more federal aid.
The government can withhold tax refunds and some Social Security benefits or garnish up to 15% of disposable pay unless stopped by a court order, Mayotte said.
“Ignoring it is not going to make it go away,” Mayotte said.
“Ignoring it’s going to make it worse.”
As of July, the Federal Student Aid agency said the government had not resumed collecting default loans by withholding federal tax refunds, other benefits and portions of borrowers’ wages.
Schools can offer free repayment webinars or direct borrowers to federal tools for lowering payments, Mayotte said.
While more repayment options may make one college loan bill more manageable, they can’t keep the rest of life from arriving.
Bold still wants to go back to work, though perhaps in an industry other than AI.
Her husband earns enough to keep the household finances steady, and she intends to use that college degree she went back for.
The fortunate life the Bolds built comes with plenty of chosen expenses: a home, two cars or their daughter’s dance classes.
Other expenses arrived uninvited: medical bills from surgeries and Bold’s stroke, which required hospitalization to stabilize her condition and restore her vision.
Fortunate or not, Bold plans to continue to make payments on the $240 in student loan bills that arrive each month.
“I’m just really fortunate,” she said.
“In a lot of ways, I’m not fortunate because of things that happen outside of my control.
But I am fortunate because of my partner.”
This story was reported in collaboration with The Associated Press through its Localize It initiative, which provides datasets, reporting and story ideas for local newsrooms.
Disclosure: Reporter Dang Le previously worked with Jill Bold at the student publications at Tarrant County College and the University of Texas at Arlington.
Dang Le is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report.
Contact him at dang.le@fortworthreport.org .
The Fort Worth Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
The Report’s higher education coverage is supported in part by major higher education institutions in Tarrant County, including Tarleton State University, Tarrant County College, Texas A&M-Fort Worth, Texas Christian University, Texas Wesleyan University, the University of Texas at Arlington and UNT Health Fort Worth.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters.
Read more about our editorial independence policy here .
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