This chapter reviews the literature on factors believed to contribute to educational loans
default and repayments, and comprises eight sections. Section 2.2 presents an overview of
global educational loans in developed and developing countries, followed by discussion of
the definition of default and repayment terms in Section 2.3. In Section 2.4, the literature
on factors influencing educational loan default and repayment is presented. The literature is
divided into eleven (11) sub-sections: amount of loan borrowed, repayment type,
unemployment and income uncertainty, students’ background characteristics, institutional
characteristics, academic experiences, parents’ income and education, knowledge about
loan agreement, awareness of education debt issues, perception towards loan repayment
and attitude towards education debt. A summary table of research relating to educational
loan repayment/default is also provided in this section. In Section 2.5, we discuss the
attitude definitions, followed by essentials of theories of attitude research in Section 2.6.
The research gaps are discussed in Section 2.7, and opportunities are summarised in the
following section. The structure of this chapter is also shown schematically in Figure 2.1.