In the fall of 2017, the New York Times documented the existence of laws in nineteen jurisdictions which allow for the revocation of government-issued professional licenses if a holder defaults on a student loan. Pleas for reform soon swamped states.
In Texas, whose next regular legislative session will begin on January 8, 2019,
Attorneys general from thirty-one states have signed a letter urging Congress to scrap a proposed federal breach notification law that was introduced by Rep. Blaine Lukemeyer (R-Mo.) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in an effort to create a national data breach notification and security standard. The proposed law, known as the Data Acquisition and Technology
On June 9, 2017, under the leadership of its former director, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a modified civil investigative demand, or “CID,” containing the following Notification of Purpose:
The purpose of this investigation is to determine whether a [sic] student-loan servicers or other persons, in connection with
While Washington debates various reforms to the federal government’s student loan framework, and other states adopt borrowers’ bills of rights to the consternation of the United States Department of Education, other proposals for dealing with the student debt crisis have cropped up in legislatures across the country. In recent weeks, two
As of March 23, at least 19 states hold or revoke the state-issued licenses of teachers and/or other professionals if the borrower is in default on their student loans. These jurisdictions span the country, both ideologically and geographically:
Like a bevy of other jurisdictions, the District of Columbia has established a “borrower’s bill of rights” which creates minimum standards for timely processing, correction of errors, and communication for servicers of federal student loans.
In response to this state-level action, the U.S. Department of Education recently argued that all such regulations are
In early March, the Department of Education, led by Secretary Elisabeth Dee DeVos, began informing some former students at campuses once owned by the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges, Inc. that it will forgive only fifty percent or less of their federal student loans. In fact, DeVos had announced her intent to adopt such a plan, a
On March 15, Governor Jay Inslee of Washington signed the Washington Student Education Loan Bill of Rights. This law had been in the works since 2017 when a report, released by Attorney General Bob Ferguson in December, documented significant disparities across gender, income, age, and race in student loan borrowing and highlighted a handful
In the student loan market, servicers play a critical role. These entities maintain account records regarding borrowers, send periodic statements advising borrowers about amounts due and outstanding balances, receive payments from borrowers, allocate those payments among various loans and loan holders, answer borrowers’ questions, report to creditors and investors, and strive to prevent default by
The FTC has just issued its annual report, the Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book, aggregating data on the 2.68 million consumer complaints that it received in 2017. This number is down from a peak in consumer complaints during 2015 – 3.04 million complaints – and last year’s total of 2.98 million.
According to the FTC’s