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, […]

On September 6, 2016, ITT announced that it was closing its campus doors, leaving tens of thousands of students across the country in the lurch.  ITT students everywhere are figuring out what to do next. Although students will have a lot of individual considerations, there are two basic options for students who were unable to […]

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 […]

Last week was full of announcements about student loans. The U.S. Department of Education (ED), along with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Department of Treasury, announced last week that it plans to take steps to improve consumer protections and enhance the student loan borrower experience. ED’s announcement focused on four areas: helping […]

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 […]