The U.S. Department of Education announced on Monday that the rate of students defaulting on their federal loans is on the rise. The national student loan cohort default rate was 8.8 percent in 2009, up from 7.0 percent the year before, according the the department.

In Hawaii, the default rate was 5.7 percent during that time, with a wide range of rates at different colleges in the state. At the University of Hawaii at Manoa, for example, the default rate was 2.5 percent, up from 2 percent the year before.

At UH’s Maui College, the default rate was 16.6 percent, up from 12.2 percent the year before but still lower than two years ago. (Check out a state-by-state breakdown of default rates.)

From a national perspective, the new data shows that 320,000 students — out of more than 3.6 million — defaulted on their loans during a period between October 2008 and September 2010.  

“These hard economic times have made it even more difficult for student borrowers to repay their loans, and that’s why implementing education reforms and protecting the maximum Pell grant is more important than ever,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement released by his office. 

The federal government tracks schools with excessive default rates to determine whether those schools may be taking advantage of low-income students. The Department of Education said it sanctioned five schools that fall into the “excessive default rate” category. None of the five schools are in Hawaii.