By Abby Shafroth and Persis Yu Earlier today, an NPR investigative report revealed sweeping problems plaguing a federal student loan program intended to provide borrowers affordable monthly payments and loan forgiveness after two decades in repayment. The investigation found that on top of previously documented problems with loan servicer misconduct preventing borrowers from accessing and staying enrolled […]

It has been one year since student loan borrowers have been theoretically eligible to have their loans forgiven under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. And yet, out of the 28,000 borrowers who applied, only 96 have had their loans forgiven. That is less than 1 percent of applicants. That number is shocking and […]

Last Thursday, President Trump announced his budget plan, which includes some dramatic changes for student loan borrowers. One of these big changes is to income-driven repayment. The budget proposes to eliminate the multiple existing income-driven repayment plans and replace them with a single income-driven repayment plan. The proposed plan offers some pros and cons. However, […]

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) […]

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 […]

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 […]

Senator Warren and Congressman Cummings recently held a “Tackling Student Debt” hearing in Boston as part of their middle class prosperity project. NCLC’s statement at the hearing highlighted concerns about government profits in the student loan programs.  The bottom line is that Congress did not create federal student loans to generate profits for the federal […]

The Department of Education’s latest round of negotiated rulemaking begins tomorrow.  The Department has set out a limited, but important agenda, focusing on income-driven repayment and benefits for military service members. Specifically, the Department has said that the agenda will be to:  (1) prepare proposed regulations to establish a new Pay as You Earn repayment plan […]

We wrote in our March 2014 report about the critical importance of giving students more than one chance to succeed in college.  The reality is that most students do not follow a straight line from high school to a four-year college to graduation.  Many stumble along the way.   Yet federal aid policies and practices hammer […]

We wrote earlier about a number of important changes to the federal student loan program. It took a long time, but it’s now almost July 1, the date when the new rules become effective. There are a number of important changes, including very significant improvements to the loan rehabilitation program. These new rehabilitation rules are […]