By Margaret Mattes Tens of thousands of student borrowers unable to complete their educations at the approximately 1473 postsecondary schools or campuses that closed between November 2013 and November 2015 nationwide are now entitled to have their federal student loans immediately discharged—i.e., cancelled. As of October 16, 2018, the U.S. Department of Education is legally […]

This month, in a victory by and for student loan borrowers, a court ordered that the Department of Education had illegally delayed giving effect to an important rule from 2016 designed to protect student loan borrowers and taxpayers from school closures and misconduct.  The court’s order meant that the rule—often called the 2016 “Borrower Defense” […]

By the Project on Predatory Student Lending at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, which is representing the plaintiffs in Calvillo Manriquez v. DeVos. This post originally appeared on https://predatorystudentlending.org/updates/update-preliminary-injunction-granted-what-it-means-and-what-happens-next/. On May 25, 2018, a federal court in San Francisco granted former Corinthian borrowers’ motion for a preliminary injunction in Calvillo Manriquez v. DeVos, ordering the Department of […]

Today, the Department of Education announced that it does not plan to implement new rules designed to protect students in online degree programs from being taken advantage of by schools that load students up with debt but offer useless degrees. The “Program Integrity and Improvement” rules (also known as the “State Authorization of Distance Education” […]

By Jane Greengold Stevens and Danielle Tarantolo, Co-Directors of Special Litigation Unit, New York Legal Assistance Group This post originally appeared on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/59a870f5e4b0d0c16bb523c2 andhttp://nylag.org/blog/2017/08/relief-in-sight-for-defrauded-student-borrowers. Former students who attended the “Wilfred Beauty Academy” in the late 1980s and ‘90s should keep an eye on their mail. Guaranty agencies, servicers, and the U.S. Department of Education are beginning to notify […]

By Adam S. Minsky, Esq., Law Office of Adam S. Minsky, Boston, Massachusetts This post originally appeared on http://bostonstudentloanlawyer.com/student-loan-management-disaster-strikes/. It’s a scary time for millions of Americans right now. Much of eastern Texas has been declared a disaster area following Hurricane Harvey. Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands have been declared disaster areas […]

By Diane Cheng, Associate Research Director, the Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) This post originally appeared on www.ticas.org/blog. 20 million students complete the FAFSA every year to apply for financial aid from the federal government, states, and colleges. More than six million federal student loan borrowers are currently enrolled in income-driven repayment (IDR) […]

Advocates for student loan borrowers breathed a sigh of relief on March 30, when the deadline passed for Congress to introduce a resolution to roll back the new “borrower defense” rules.  These rules are designed to protect students and taxpayers from harm by predatory schools.  After rumblings from Washington that these rules would be in […]

There are no easy answers for former ITT Tech students struggling with student loan debt, but there are a number of actions these students can consider to try to get rid of any unfair debt. Closed School Discharge, Borrower Defenses, State Tuition Recovery Funds In previous posts, we discussed the key options for the tens […]

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Education announced final regulations to protect federal student loan borrowers and taxpayers against closures and misconduct by predatory schools like we saw with the now closed Corinthian Colleges. The regulations, most of which are scheduled to go into effect July 1, 2017, include significant amendments to the rules governing borrower defenses to […]