UPDATE (April 2, 2020): The Department of Education has provided more information about implementation of the CARES Act.  Updates are provided in the text below. **************************** On Friday, March 27th, the U.S. House of Representatives passed and the President signed into law the ‘‘Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act’’ or the ‘‘CARES Act,’’ emergency […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Department of Education announced late in the day on Friday that following a review of 22 private collection agencies, the Department will “wind down” contacts with five agencies that were “…providing inaccurate information to borrowers.”  The five companies are:  Coast Professional, Enterprise Recovery Systems, National Recoveries, Pioneer Credit Recovery (owned by Sallie Mae/Navient), and […]

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 […]