All posts by Richard Fossey

About Richard Fossey

Richard Fossey is a professor at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, Louisiana. He received his law degree from the University of Texas and his doctorate from Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is editor of Catholic Southwest, A Journal of History and Culture.

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  Why Did Department of Education Let FedLoan Servicing Screw People Over PSLF?

  As Alan White reported in Credit Slip yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education assigned the complex task of monitoring the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program to its worst-performing student-loan servicer–FedLoan Servicing (Fedloan). In 2017, DOE ranked...

  • Posted October 15, 2018
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  Department of Education Keeps Backing Up to Run Over PSLF Again and Again

  For many years, the Department of Education has managed the federal student-loan program like a drunk creeping through heavy traffic. It has stumbled, reeled, dissembled, weaved and bobbed, but always avoided a head-on collision with reality. But...

  • Posted October 3, 2018
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  Sue Reagan v. Educational Credit Management Corporation: “A Camel Whose Back is Already Broken”

  Sue Reagan is 60-years old and lives in a mobile home on rented land. She has a part-time job but lives near or below the poverty line. She took out student loans to obtain a bachelor’s degree...

  • Posted October 1, 2018
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  ECMC to Go Suck an Egg

  Educational Credit Management Corporation is the Department of Education’s premier student-loan debt collector. ECMC has appeared in literally hundreds of student-loan bankruptcy cases, and it knows all the legal tricks for defeating a student-loan borrower’s efforts...

  • Posted September 24, 2018
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  Department of Education’s New Report on Student-Loan Casualties: A Dr. Strangelove Moment

  You remember that great scene from the movie Dr. Strangelove. U.S. President Muffley (played by Peter Sellers) worries about the consequences of nuclear war with Russia. “You’re talking about mass murder,” President Muffley muses. But General Turgidson...

  • Posted September 24, 2018
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  What If We Just Fixed the Income-Based Student Loan Repayment System

  Sandy Baum published a short essay yesterday in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Don’t Get Rid of the Income-Based Loan Repayment System. Fix It.” As she said in her essay, the federal student-loan repayment system as...

  • Posted August 2, 2018
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  Betsy DeVos, the for-profit college industry’s best pal, rolls back regulatory protections for students who were defrauded by for-profit colleges

  This week, Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s lamentable Secretary of Education, proposed new rules for implementing the Department of Education’s Borrower Defense to Repayment Program. The new rules–433 pages long–outline the DeVos regime’s procedures for processing fraud claims...

  • Posted July 27, 2018
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  Student Loan Debtor Near Retirement Told to Live Poor for the Rest of Her Life

  Audrey Eve Schatz, a 64-year-old single woman, attempted to discharge $110,000 in student-loans through bankruptcy, but Judge Elizabeth Katz, a Massachusetts bankruptcy judge, refused to give Ms. Schatz a discharge. Why? Because Schatz had enough equity in...

  • Posted July 19, 2018
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  National Collegiate Student Loan Trust Case Inside Look of Mock

  In 2007, Casondra Mock, a Texas resident, borrowed about $20,000 from Union Federal Savings Bank, a Rhode Island institution, to finance her studies at the University of Houston at Clear Lake. The interest rate was high–almost 14...

  • Posted July 18, 2018
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  Watch Out – Student Loan Interest Rates Going Up

  James Carville, who was once President Bill Clinton’s political strategist, famously remarked: “It’s the economy, stupid!” But Carville’s one-liner needs updating. For student-loan debtors, “It’s the interest, stupid!” And student-loan interest rates are going up. For undergraduate...

  • Posted July 16, 2018
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  Single Mother Wins Student Loan Bankruptcy Discharge and Has it Ripped Away on Appeal

  In 2013, Alexandra Acosta-Conniff, an Alabama school teacher and single mother of two children, filed an adversary proceeding in an Alabama bankruptcy court, hoping to discharge student loans that had grown to $112,000. She did not have...

  • Posted July 12, 2018
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  Is the Department of Education Just Being a Giant Bully?

  Distressed debtors cannot discharge student loans unless they can show their loans constitute an “undue hardship” to themselves and their dependents. Congress did not define undue hardship in the Bankruptcy Code, so it was left to the...

  • Posted June 26, 2018
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  Smith v. U.S. Department of Education: A severely stressed student-loan debtor gets bankruptcy relief and the judge questions harsh interpretation of “undue hardship”

  Kirt Francisco Smith, a 39-year-old unemployed man with severe health problems, won a bankruptcy discharge of his student-loan debt–almost $50,000. Every student-loan debtor’s victory in bankruptcy court is something to celebrate; we don’t see enough of them....

  • Posted June 25, 2018
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  Income Driven Repayment Plans for Federal Student Loans Create Moral Hazard

  More and more student borrowers are being forced into income-driven repayment plans (IDRPs) because they can’t pay back their college loans under a standard 10-year repayment schedule. According to an article in Educational Researcher, the proportion of...

  • Posted June 25, 2018
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• The Injustice of Irregular Bankruptcy Student Loan Discharges

  Katy Stech Ferek published an article in Wall Street Journal in which she reported that bankruptcy judges are becoming more sympathetic to debtors seeking to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy. Is Ferek correct? I once would...

  • Posted June 18, 2018
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