New York has taken some steps to stop student loan debt relief scams, but other states are going further. Notably, the attorney general of Illinois, Lisa Madigan, has filed additional lawsuits against student loan debt relief companies. Madigan made the news by suing two such companies in the middle of last year. Now there are …
State Actions Against Student Loan Debt Relief Scams Growing Read More »
The odyssey continues, but at least one federal court has dismissed challenges against the Department of Education’s (ED’s) “gainful employment” rule, which is set to go into effect on July 1, 2015. ED promulgated the rule to prevent for-profit colleges from abusing their students’ access to federal student loan dollars. In particular, it believed that …
Federal Court Upholds Education Department’s ‘Gainful Employment’ Rule Read More »
From the late 1990s until recently, struggling student loan debtors had few options for handling their onerous debts. Because bankruptcy was generally unavailable, most of them placed their loans on hardship deferments until they found paying work. The interest payments would balloon, and they would fall further behind. For some, it would be lifelong debt. …
Getting on an Income-Based Repayment Plan Is Easy, But Staying on It… Read More »
Susan Dynarski’s blog post in The New York Times’ The Upshot blog sheds a lot of light on what we don’t know about federal student loans, which are the vast majority of all student loans. Dynarski’s biggest frustration is the Department of Education’s lack of statistical expertise on monitoring this massive debt program, noting that …
NYT Calls for New Authority to Monitor Federal Student Loans Read More »
There’s a lot of bad reporting on student loans out there. Frequently, you will hear about how student loans aren’t a problem because the people with high balances are a tiny minority of all student loan debtors, or that higher debts tend to coincide with higher incomes. The issue isn’t that these points are strictly …
Student Loan Defaults Mounting Despite Income-Based Repayment Programs Read More »
Student loans are a serious and growing burden for American households, so it’s unsurprising that student loan scams are proliferating. Debtors who pay substantial sums to people fraudulently offering to help them with their federal student loans might be forced to file New York bankruptcy. The issue cropped up earlier this year when the attorney …
Don’t Fall for Federal Student Loan Debt Relief Scams Read More »
This is the basic finding the Pew Charitable Trusts’ report on the financial situation of “Generation X” (“Gen X”), which it defines as all Americans born between 1965 and 1980. Generational designations are really kind of arbitrary—why does Gen X only get 15 years?—and mobility studies often ask their readers to accept silly assumptions. One …
‘Generation X’s’ Income High, But Debts Even Higher Read More »
One of the most questionable changes to the Bankruptcy Code in the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) was to extend the “undue hardship” standard to discharging private student loans. For New York bankruptcy, this meant that irrespective of who the lender was student debts were basically permanent. Fortunately, for federal loan …
CFPB Calls For Modest Bankruptcy Reform for Private Student Loans Read More »
It’s widely acknowledged that student loans are an obstacle in New York bankruptcy, but there are unusual times when student loan debts can help debtors choose the chapter they wish to file in. For higher-income debtors it’s usually harder to file in chapter 7 because their incomes exceed the median for families in their state, …
Student Loans As a ‘Special Circumstance’ to Stay in Chapter 7 Read More »
The standard drill for collections on most debts is that the lender sells the debt to a collections agency for a fraction of the loan’s balance. It then (hopefully) obeys the laws to convince the borrower to repay it. For student debtors whose education loans are directly lent from the federal government (not the older …
National Consumer Law Center Slams Government on Student Loan Collections Read More »
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