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Former ITT Student Sues Navient For Student Loan Forgiveness | Forbes
Today, a new lawsuit was filed against Navient, the student loan servicer formerly known as Sallie Mae. The suit was filed by the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School on behalf of Jorge and Alicia Villalba.
Trump Administration’s Handling of Stalled Student Debt Relief Claims Threatens Proposed Settlement | Washington Post
A proposed court settlement between the Trump administration and defrauded borrowers is in jeopardy after the administration revealed its widespread denials of requests for student debt cancellation. Ninety-four percent of the debt relief claims the Education Department has processed since reaching the agreement in April have been rejected, the department said in a court filing last week. The federal agency issued 78,400 decisions, of which 4,400 were approved and the remainder denied.
“Attacking the Concept of Debt” | Harvard Magazine
Only a few years ago, Douglas Jones, who worked night shifts as a security guard at a nursing home in Roxbury, was hesitant to spend even $10 more than his typical budget allowed. Payments on his student loan debt were being withdrawn directly from his bank account. If the balance was short—for instance, if Jones hadn’t managed to get 40 hours at his job that week—the bank charged an overdraft fee. The debt had ruined his credit score and he hadn’t had a credit card in years. “They were even taking money I didn’t have,” Jones says. “It was stressing me the hell out.” Along with millions of other Americans, Jones had fallen prey to the for-profit college industry, which is in essence a two-pronged system—federal loans at one end and for-profit schools designed to access those loans at the other.
Defrauded Student Loan Borrowers Win, but Still Lose | New York Times
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is denying huge batches of relief requests from students whose schools defrauded them. Even those who aren't denied are getting very little -- or sometimes nothing.
Education Dept. Left Social Security Numbers of Thousands of Borrowers Exposed for Months | Washington Post
The Education Department left the Social Security numbers of tens of thousands of people seeking student debt relief unprotected and susceptible to a data breach for at least six months, according to people familiar with the matter. Angela Morabito, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, acknowledged the error but called it “nonevent.” The data was "was on the department’s secure, internal server, and there is no indication anyone outside the department could have had access to it,” she said. "There is also no indication anyone inside the department handled this file improperly.”
Judge Orders Betsy DeVos to Cancel 7,200 Scammed Borrowers’ Student Loans | MarketWatch
During most of the Trump administration’s tenure, the U.S. Department of Education, led by Betsy DeVos, has worked to limit student debt cancellation for borrowers who say they were scammed by their schools. The agency scored a win in that effort Friday, when Democrats failed to muster enough votes to override President Trump’s veto of a bill that would have overturned the Department’s approach to student debt cancellation under what’s known as the “borrower defense” rule.
Borrower-Defense Veto Override Fails | Inside Higher Ed
Opponents of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's rule making it more difficult for those who have been defrauded by their colleges to have their student loans forgiven are looking to the courts to block the measure after suffering a defeat in Congress Friday. In a victory for DeVos, the Democratic House failed to override President Donald Trump’s veto of a bill that would have undone DeVos’s controversial borrower-defense rule.
DeVos Tries Everything to Force Deceived Students to Repay Loans | Republic Report
Betsy DeVos’s four-year immoral crusade to harm American education has included a thoroughly corrupt effort to protect predatory for-profit colleges and force students who were scammed by these schools to pay back their student loans anyway. Advocates for veterans, single mothers, immigrants, and others ripped off by these schools have been determined to fight back. There were numerous developments last week in this struggle, and they deserve our attention.
Landmark Court Ruling on Student Borrower Defense Flies in Face of Trump Veto | Yahoo Finance
A federal court ordered the discharge of student loans under an Obama-era borrower defense rule for the first time on the same day that a vote to override President Trump's veto related to the same rule failed in the House. The implications of Friday's events bring more uncertainty to hundreds of thousands of affected borrowers as the watershed court ruling faces a potential appeal and consumer advocates vow to continue fighting the Trump administration's repeal of rules designed to protect defrauded student borrowers.
Federal Judge Orders DeVos To Cancel Student Loans For 7,200 Defrauded Students | Forbes
Yesterday, a federal judge ordered Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to cancel the student loans for the 7,200 student borrowers in Massachusetts who attended the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey applied for “borrower defense” on behalf of 7,200 former Corinithian College students as a group application. Borrower defense is the provision that helps defrauded students by giving the Secretary of Education the authority to discharge debt when schools lie and cheat their students.