Defaulted student loan borrowers planning to file their taxes should know that any refund they were expecting will likely wind up at the Department of Education (ED) instead of their bank account. Tax refund offsets are one of the powerful tools the government uses to collect defaulted federal student loans. For many struggling student loan borrowers, […]

With nearly a quarter of federal student loan borrowers in default, borrowers need a system that will help them to successfully repay their loans. Unfortunately, the Department of Education continues to reward contractors that lie to borrowers and to incentivize programs that set borrowers up for failure. InsideARM reports that over the weekend, the Department […]

According to Politico, late Monday night, the Department of Education told a federal appeals court that a court order blocking its ability to send any newly defaulted student loan borrowers to its hired debt collectors has cost taxpayers more than $5 million in lost collections since March. This lawsuit came about because private debt collection […]

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 […]

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 […]

Student loan borrowers should be aware of a proposed rule by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued on May 6, 2016.  It implements a new law that allows robocalls and texts to be made to a cell phone without the consumer’s consent “to collect a debt owed to or guaranteed by the United States.” This […]

Today the National Consumer Law Center and the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education seeking the release of student loan debt collection information and race data.  We sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in May 2015, requesting that the Department release documents both about its debt collection policies […]