The Department of Education’s decision to end information sharing with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is a betrayal of students and a boon to loan servicers with a history of preying on those students.
Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) applauds the news that the Department of Education will grant automatic discharges to all former students of American Career Institute (ACI) in Massachusetts. Before being confirmed, any nominee for Secretary of the Department of Education must clearly articulate plans to rapidly pursue additional automatic group discharges, to ensure that all Americans are protected from future exploitation of taxpayer-backed loans by predatory schools.
AFR welcomes the news that the Department of Education has finalized a rule that will prohibit the use of forced arbitration at schools. We hope that as the Department moves forward to procedural guidance and to enforcement that it does everything possible to ensure that no defrauded borrower be left buried in debt from a school that broke the law, betrayed its students, and cheated taxpayers.
Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) is dismayed to learn that the Department of Education is still actively collecting on nearly 80,000 former Corinthian students. These actions run counter to the requests of AFR and a coalition of advocates led by the National Consumer Law Center
“We continue to believe that the Department should be providing automatic group relief for wronged Corinthian students, rather than pursuing the application-based, piecemeal approach it has taken to discharges thus far.”
“The pace of relief for wronged Corinthian students…remains far too slow, and its scope frustratingly narrow,” said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at the progressive Americans for Financial Reform. She pointed out that only students who took out loans after July 2010 are eligible for debt cancellation, which excludes borrowers with old bank-based federal student loans.
“The pace of relief for wronged Corinthian students…remains far too slow, and its scope frustratingly narrow,” said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at the progressive Americans for Financial Reform. She pointed out that only students who took out loans after July 2010 are eligible for debt cancellation, which excludes borrowers with old bank-based federal student loans.
“We are deeply concerned by the slow pace and small number of discharges that have been processed and that many of the Department’s proposals in the current negotiated rulemaking process move in the wrong direction, reducing eligibility for relief, pitting students against schools, and creating unnecessary burdens on students and the Department.”
“The department must move quickly to discharge the debt of all Corinthian students,” said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at the progressive Americans for Financial Reform. “Hundreds of thousands of borrowers from Corinthian remain on the hook for federal student loans. … despite the fact that the illegal actions identified in department enforcement actions were endemic throughout the entire chain.”
“It is good that the Department of Education recognizes the depth of the problems of fraud at too many for-profit institutions of higher education, as evidenced by the formation of the Student Aid Enforcement Unit. But hundreds of thousands of borrowers from the now-bankrupt Corinthian Colleges, Inc. remain on the hook for federal student loans, and continue to accrue interest. This is despite the fact that the illegal actions identified in Department enforcement actions against certain Corinthian schools were endemic throughout the entire chain.”