On February 22, 2019, Judge Timothy Kelly issued an important opinion in America Bar Association v. U.S. Department of Education. The American Bar Association (ABA), suing for itself and four public-service attorneys, accused the Department of Education (DOE) of violating fundamental principles of administrative law when it ruled that the public-service lawyers were ineligible to …
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program has been in a freefall for several years now. Politico is reporting, “Only about 1 percent of the teachers, nurses, public defenders, military personnel and other public servants applying for student loan relief under the nation’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program are succeeding.” That is somewhere a disgrace …
The Trump Administration hates the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF). Signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, PSLF allows student-loan debtors who work in public-service jobs to have their student loans forgiven if they make 120 student-loan payments in a qualified repayment plan. The first PSLF participants to have accumulated 120 …
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a report on options for reducing the deficit: 2019 to 2028 and in it is an interesting section for people hoping for forgiveness of their federal student loan under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Let’s just hope these proposals don’t become the new law because if so, …
In a recent speech, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos called the federal student loan program “a thunderstorm loom[ing] on the horizon.” Only 20 percent of borrowers are paying down the principal and interest on their loans, DeVos said, even as students borrow more and more money to finance their higher education. Comparing the student loan …
It is almost mindblowing how much the Betsy DeVos Department of Education under Trump is just screwing over student loan debtors. The Borrower Defense to Repayment program that is supposed to forgive student loans of defrauded student loan debtors have effectively stopped processing valid claims. The Department of Education is changing the rules all over …
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 FedLoan last among 9 student-loan servicers “based on delinquency rates and customer satisfaction survey results.” PSLF, created by …
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 that time is over. Under Betsy DeVos’s colossal mismanagement (and her predecessors), DOE has messed up the Public …
With the changes the Department of Education has been making under Secretary DeVos, it can come as no surprise that the promised loan forgiveness through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program is MIA. I’ve had an open Freedom of Information Act request for months now asking for data on how many PSLF applications have …
Question: Dear Steve, I graduated from law school in 1995. I owed about $50,000 in student loans. I have been through bankruptcy twice, most recently in 2008. I went through some serious health issues. My loans were not discharged in either proceeding. I am on an income-based repayment plan. I now owe about $180,000. I …