Source?
That is astonishing!
About 20 million people are expected to attend a college this fall [0]. With the expected graduation time of six years for undergrad [1], that means that each year's 'class' is only 3.33 million people. So, that means that about 1/3 people with an undergrad degree will default on their loans (yes, fast and dirty stats here). Couple that with the fact that only about 70% of people take out loans [2], and you have a default rate per class of ~43%.
Yeah, ~2/5ths of people that take out loans will default on them?! Is that anywhere near the defualt rates of other types of loans (auto, home, etc)? This seems crazy.
[0] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=569 (this is pretty complex data, well worth the dive)
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/heres-how-much-the-average-s...
EDIT: Yep, it seems to be true [3]. Home and auto loans are a bit harder to google, but they seem to be at about 4% and 6% respectively. Honestly, the default rates on student loans are really high compared to other loans of a similar timeline and monetary value.
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/13/twenty-two-percent-of-studen...