Category Archives: Student Loans

Call for Papers for Symposium on Post-Secondary Education Non-Completion and Student Loan Debt

We've received the following call for papers: Submission Due Date:  Sunday, June 17, 2018 at midnight The Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy, Boston College Law School, and the National Consumer Law Center are pleased to announce a symposium on Post-Secondary Education Non-Completion and Student Loan Debt to take place at Boston College Law […]

Is Mulvaney Changing the CFPB’s Structure to Downgrade Student Loan Enforcement?

by Jeff Sovern Glen Thrush has an article in the Times headlined Mulvaney Demotes Unit That Polices Student Loans in Consumer Bureau Reshuffle. Excerpt: The change comes at a critical moment in the agency’s effort to rein in abuses in the student loan industry. The program, started under the Obama administration, has clawed back about $750 […]

Alexandrov & Jiménez Article Finds 2005 Bankruptcy Reforms “Failed Miserably” to Help Students

Alexei Alexandrov, formerly of the CFPB, and Dalié Jiménez of Irvine, Connecticut, and Harvard have written Lessons from Bankruptcy Reform in the Private Student Loan Market, 11 Harvard Law & Policy Review (2017).  Here's the abstract: This article explores the effects of the 2005 bankruptcy amendments in the private student loan market. Overall, our findings suggest that […]

Loonin/Morgan Article: We Need to Know More to Solve the Federal Student Aid Problem

Deanne Loonin of Harvard University – Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center and Julie Margetta Morgan of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have written Federal Student Aid: Can We Solve a Problem We Do Not Understand?, forthcoming in the Utah Law Review. Here is the abstract: Americans currently owe over $1.3 trillion in student loans, […]

USA Today: Millions of student loans could be headed for a shakeup in coming months

Here. Excerpt: Some changes by the Trump administration are already unfolding. The Education Department plans to consolidate the number of federal loan servicing companies from nine to one. Administration officials also have discussed moving the federal loan program from the Education Department to the Treasury Department. Meanwhile, the Trump administration announced plans to roll back […]

Deanne Loonin: Overhauling Federal Student Loan Repayment

Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. Excerpt: In my years of experience representing student loan borrowers, I have consistently seen servicers putting their own interests, or what they perceive to be the government’s interests, first. They rarely counsel student borrowers about the range of student loan relief programs, too often ignoring the fact […]

MarketWatch: The student loan system is so complicated even the experts have trouble figuring it out

Here.  Depressing excerpt: As director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project, Persis Yu spends her days doing pretty much exactly what her title implies — working on behalf of low-income student loan borrowers both helping them with their individual cases and advocating for laws and policies that would benefit them. […]

Susan Dynarski: The Wrong Way to Fix Student Debt

Here, in the Times's Economic View column.  Excerpt: [T]he Trump administration is taking us in the wrong direction, making student loans riskier, more expensive and more burdensome for borrowers. First, the Education Department has weakened accountability for the companies that administer student loans. Second, it has made it more difficult for borrowers to apply for, […]

What Would Stop Illegal Student Loan Schemes if the Choice Act is Enacted?

by Jeff Sovern Rohit Chopra senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America and formerly student loan ombudsman at the CFPB, testified last week on the Choice Act and listed a few of student loan cases that could not have been brought under the Choice Act.  Here is his list: While many know of Wells Fargo’s […]

Times: Loans ‘Designed to Fail’: States Say Navient Preyed on Students

Here (behind paywall). Excerpt: [T]wo state lawsuits filed by the attorneys general in Illinois and Washington, [allege] that Sallie Mae engaged in predatory lending, extending billions of dollars in private loans to students . . .that never should have been made in the first place. * * * New details unsealed last month in the […]