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” […]

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 […]

According to the IRS, if you went to a Corinthian school and had your loans canceled under the borrower defense rule, you should not owe taxes on the canceled amount. Unfortunately, we have learned that the Department of Education and its servicers sent IRS forms 1099-C to Corinthian students whose loans were canceled in 2016. […]

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 […]

We wrote in a previous post about our coalition letter to the Department of Education’s “Special Master”, urging him to create a fair and accessible “defense to repayment” process for borrowers.  While the special master Joseph Smith works on this project, the Department also announced that it will be holding hearings and creating a negotiated […]

NCLC Advocates Applaud Department of Education’s Step Towards Granting Widespread Student Debt Relief to Corinthian Borrowers Over the past year, the National Consumer Law Center has called on the U.S. Department of Education to cancel the student loans of all borrowers harmed by the predatory and illegal practices of Corinthian Colleges.  NCLC advocates applaud today’s […]

Comments on the Department of Education’s proposed “gainful employment” regulation are due next Tuesday May 27.   This is the Department’s second attempt to define what it means for career education programs at public, nonprofit and for-profit colleges to prepare students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation.  According to the Department of Education, a […]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) announced yesterday that it filed a lawsuit against the for-profit school ITT Educational Services based on allegations of predatory lending and other unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices.   According to CFPB Director Richard Cordray, “ITT marketed itself as improving consumers’ lives but it was really just improving its bottom line…We believe ITT […]