In case you missed it, there has been a flurry of interest in issues that impact older student loan borrowers. Right before the holidays, the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) released a report documenting the harsh consequences that the Department of the Treasury’s practice of garnishing Americans’ social security payments has on vulnerable student loan borrowers […]

Since the election of Donald Trump for President, we have heard from many people asking us, “what does this mean for student loan borrowers.” The honest answer is that we do not yet know. We have very little actual information about what the next administration plans, and it is still too early to speculate.  The […]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Student Loan Ombudsman released a report today estimating that over a third of borrowers who rehabilitate their loans will re-default within the first two years. It further highlighted industry estimates that re-default rates could be as high as 75% over the entire life of the loans. This confirms one […]

This week, the National Consumer Law Center updated its policy brief highlighting the need to end the seizure of Earned Income Tax Credits (“EITC”) from defaulted federal student loan borrowers. As we have said in previous blog posts (here and here), seizing EITC payments is a counterproductive policy.  The EITC is extremely important to working […]

This morning, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a scathing letter to the U.S. Department of Education highlighting some troubling data about the way that the Department  treated Corinthian Colleges borrowers eligible for fast track relief. The Department announced that these borrowers were eligible for relief after finding that nearly 100 Corinthian campuses (operating as WyoTech, […]

Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (“CFPB”) Student Loan Ombudsman released its midyear report analyzing complaints submitted directly by consumers about their student loans. Importantly, the CFPB’s Student Loan Ombudsman announced that it is now officially accepting complaints about federal student loans. Although it has actually been accepting federal student loan complaints for a […]

Yesterday, NCLC and 39 others sent a letter to Secretary John King demanding that the Department of Education look at its loan data to determine the impact that student loan defaults have on student loan borrowers of color. In our letter, we asked the Department to collect and release the data necessary to ensure that […]

On a quiet Friday afternoon, just prior to the Fourth of July weekend, the U.S. Treasury Department released the first report on its student loan debt collection pilot program. Treasury launched this pilot program last year with the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to learn more about the way the government collects on defaulted student […]

Credit reporting is a confusing topic for all types of debt, but it is especially confusing for student loans.  This is largely because there are so many different types of student loans and they are governed by so many different rules.  For example, there are multiple types of federal student loans, as well as private […]

It has been one month since tax season came to an end. By now, many student loan borrowers have learned the hard way that the federal government will take their tax refund, including Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC), if they are in default on a federal loan.  A couple of months ago, we shared a […]