February 15, 2026

James Heimer for NPR

Happy Sunday!

It’s Cory here, correspondent on the team, with a student loan story that you weren’t likely to find many places this week. That’s because it’s the kind of story that hides from reporters and the general public in the weeds of data spreadsheets.

The “peg” for the story – the newsy trigger that makes a thing topical – was Tuesday’s release of the latest Household Debt and Credit Report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Wait! Don’t fall asleep yet. I promise, this is interesting.

When student loan borrowers miss nine months of payments, they’re technically in default. But a years-long pandemic pause in repayment meant that no borrower could newly default on their loans until last June, at the earliest.

Now that we’re several months past that marker, how are default numbers looking?

Not great. Tuesday’s report shows that, at the end of 2025, roughly a million borrowers defaulted on their loans. And, as I told Ailsa Chang on All Things Considered, older, federal data suggests millions more are right behind them, riding this down escalator toward default.

You can find my whole story here.

— Cory Turner, Correspondent, NPR Ed

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In other news...

U.S. colleges received more than $5 billion in foreign gifts, contracts in 2025. U.S. colleges received more than $5 billion in reportable foreign gifts and contracts in 2025, according to a new website from the U.S. Education Department. The release is part of a push by the Trump administration to make foreign influence in colleges and universities more transparent. Read the story.

– Elissa Nadworny, Correspondent, NPR
– Steve Drummond, Senior Editor, NPR

The false promise of a tech job. Learn to code, they said! And then the layoffs started happening. The tech industry is hemorrhaging jobs. According to one estimate, there have been over 700,000 tech workers laid off since 2022. But there was once a time when “learn to code” was the advice de rigueur. Listen to the podcast.

— NPR’s It’s Been a Minute Podcast

The Pentagon says it's cutting ties with 'woke' Harvard, ending military training. The announcement marks the latest development in the Trump administration's prolonged standoff with Harvard over the White House's demands for reforms at the Ivy League school. Read the story.

— The Associated Press

And here's something to make you smile...

In Beirut, Lebanon's cats of war find peace on university campus. There are several things that make the American University of Beirut unique. Among them are its 160-year-old liberal arts education in the center of the Middle East. There is its seaside location in a cosmopolitan capital. But hands down, the college's most unusual feature is its campus cats — as many as 1,600 of them.

The cat rescue started during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s when animals sought shelter from street fighting in the 1980s on its campus in the downtown Hamra area. It has evolved into a continuing program to care for cats abandoned during more recent wars. Read the story.

If you have feedback on this newsletter – let us know by replying with your thoughts! As always, thanks for listening and reading!
— The NPR Education Team

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