Strong majorities across political parties show concern about the level of student debt in the United States and oppose the Department of Education’s and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) recent actions to weaken protections for students, according to a new poll released by Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL).
AFR Ed Fund and thirty-three other organizations submitted the following comments in response to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on Debt Collection Practices (Regulation F).
This new data “confirms what advocates in the student borrower advocacy community have been saying for a long time: that student debt has hit crisis levels in the U.S.,” said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform.
Tomorrow marks one hundred fifty days since Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Kathy Kraninger committed to quickly filling the nation’s top student loan watchdog position—a role that has been vacant for almost a year. As student debt nears $1.6 trillion and predatory practices plague the market, the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) are releasing a roundup of failures by the current CFPB Director to stand up for student loan borrowers.
“Income-share agreements are nothing more than student debt with a fancy name,” said Alexis Goldstein, Senior Policy Analyst at Americans for Financial Reform. “Financial investors hungry for yield are using ISAs to put student debt in an elaborate and confusing package, while forcing students to waive key rights and seeking to withhold the already too limited consumer protections federal student loans provide.”
Cancelling America’s student debt would lift enormous burdens for the over 44 million Americans with student loans. But it would also boost the economy for EVERYONE, whether they have loans or not.
Majorities of American voters across parties believe that the student debt burden – now at $1.5 trillion – represents a crisis for the country, according to a new poll. The survey also found widespread concern with efforts by Mick Mulvaney, the Trump official installed at the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to gut the agency’s student lending office.
A new polling memo from Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending documents the widespread agreement among American voters that the student debt burden, now at $1.5 trillion, is a crisis.
“What Mulvaney is really interested in is not serious research, but information that advances the interests of the Wall Street banks and predatory lenders he serves.”
“The New York Times obtained draft memos showing that officials initially discussed using budgetary impact as the justification. In other words, they looked for whatever pretense could get them to stop the rule on behalf of for-profit operators. Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, called the action ‘a slap in the face to defrauded Americans,’ and accused DeVos’s agency of placing ‘the interests of wealthy for-profit college executives ahead of students striving for a better life.’”