student debt Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Americans for Financial Reform

Joint Letter to Congress: 50+ Organizations Urge Congress to Keep Rules That Protect Students and Taxpayers from Waste and Fraud in Higher Education

“We believe protections for student and taxpayers should be strengthened, not scaled back. …Veterans, low-income students and students of color have been disproportionately harmed by predatory colleges. Last month, 16 organizations representing millions of military servicemembers, veterans, survivors, and military families voiced their strong support for these protections and urged Congress to fully uphold them.”

AFR in the News: New federal rules could make it easier to have student loans forgiven (Washington Post)

“[C]onsumer advocates worry that people already contending with the existing process still face an uphill battle. ‘If you do the math, there are well over 80 percent of folks who are eligible that either don’t know to apply or have applied and the Education Department hasn’t done anything with their application,’ said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at the progressive Americans for Financial Reform. ‘I don’t understand why the department is insisting on doing this person by person, instead of just approving students automatically.’”

Letter to Regulators: AFR Urges Dept of ED to Add Enforceable Borrower Protections to Servicing Contracts, Public Input to Solicitation Process

AFR wrote to the Department of Education and urged them to ensure their contracts with student loan servicers have strong protections for borrowers.

AFR in the News: Corinthian students may have a clearer path towards debt relief (Washington Post)

“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.

AFR in the News: Corinthian students may have a clearer path towards debt relief (Washington Post)

“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.

AFR in the News: Corinthian students to receive $28 million in loan forgiveness (Washington Post)

“Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, says the department has done a poor job of reaching out to Corinthian students who might be eligible for relief… ‘[T]he department should be pursuing a much more comprehensive, multi-pronged outreach strategy in order to ensure that all students victimized by Corinthian are aware of their legal right to pursue debt cancellation.’”

AFR Statement: Education Department Must Do More for Former Corinthian Students

“We welcome the news… that 1,312 former students of Heald College – part of predatory for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges Inc. – will finally see the debt cancellation they have long been promised. But we remain gravely concerned by the Department’s unjustifiably narrow approach to debt cancellation, which if it continues unchanged may leave hundreds of thousands of students burdened with debts foisted on them by deceptive and abusive practices.”