Democrats Urge Government to Refund Billions in Student Loans

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

By Natalie Kitroeff
September 30, 2015 — 10:26 AM EDT

The government’s new program for canceling student debt, launched in June, looked like a historic win for debtors. A year after troubled for-profit education company Corinthian Colleges collapsed, the Department of Education opened the first formal pathway for students of its colleges to ask for loan forgiveness. Now a group of Democrats in Congress is charging that the Department of Education has taken too long to refund the debt and has made it unlikely that most students will get relief.

“It has been three months since the Department of Education said it would create a debt-relief process but we have seen almost no progress,” said Representative Janice Hahn (D-Calif.), one of 17 House Democrats who signed a letter to Education Department Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday. The Democrats said the department should be canceling billions in student loans automatically, whether or not graduates seek it.

The department recently appointed Joseph Smith, who monitored banks’ compliance with the $25 billion mortgage settlement following the foreclosure crisis, to guide the distribution of relief to student debtors who took out loans to attend one of three Corinthian Colleges-owned chains: Everest, Heald, and Wyotech. Corinthian shuttered or sold its colleges amid state investigations into deceptive recruitment practices. Smith said in a September report (PDF) that the department’s goal is to create a long-lasting system of loan relief that would help Corinthian grads while also applying "more broadly to students at all institutions who believe they have been defrauded by their colleges.”

Under the government’s plan, taxpayers could be on the hook to pay back billions of dollars in debt. But Hahn suggested that the Department of Education has made it too complicated for people who deserve relief to secure any.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-30/democrats-urge-government-to-refund-billions-in-student-loans?module=TopNews&position=10_headline

[Xyzse]

1. Sounds like good news.

Education cost has ballooned to unprecedented levels, and I actually don't know why.

[yeoman6987]

4. Dorms are getting out of hand

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/08/29/10-Public-Colleges-with-Insanely-Luxurious-Dorms


That just one article of many. They need to go back to 2 set of bunk beds and communal bathrooms. If you don't think this raises the costs. It does. Tuition is actually cheap. It's the rest that adds up.

[Xyzse]

5. I see. Thanks, I am sure that is definitely one of many reasons.

[yeoman6987]

6. I forgot books too....outrageous.

[Xyzse]

7. Ugh, the books... I shared mine with friends.

During college, I was hustling with a part time and doing odd jobs too.
Now and then, I would get to write papers, write love letters(in calligraphy) 10-20 dependent on length, add tip if I actually have to write something up. I saved many a relationship back then, which paid for some of my living expenses.

Books were expensive. Hmmm, which reminds me, some lady friend borrowed my notes and never returned them.

[yeoman6987]

8. Damn her. Haha

That was smart. My nephew begins college in the fall. He has two acceptances with partial scholarships so far. I am looking forward to the process of the whole thing to see the difference in 25 years when I went. I didn't get any scholarships but I did go to public university which I thought was expensive at the time. Our dorms were terrible, the food worse but we dealt. I am not sure kids today would live and eat the way my class did. Just not sure.

[Xyzse]

11. Seriously...

They were calligraphied too!
Much of them were.

I kept losing regular pens, but I love my calligraphy pens. It was cheaper to buy the ink, refillable kind, than keeping buying new pens.

It made sense for me.

[PatrynXX]

2. course

then there's depression which is a disability which ruins your credit when this shit happens. but kinda kills the loans too. Dumb dumb dumb. I wouldn't suggest my route I'm trying to figure out how to fix it. (my credit that is)

[KansDem]

3. Would this include all student loans?

Or just those taken out to attend one of three Corinthian Colleges-owned chains?

Oh, never mind--

The House members said that the Department of Education should “automatically discharge the debt of all Corinthian students” instead of requiring graduates to submit claims showing that a given school violated state law. They did not specify how many classes of Corinthian graduates should be eligible for loan forgiveness, but the potential cost is immense. The department has said that refunding the loans for everyone who went to Corinthian since 2010 would cost $3.2 billion.

And this statement is quite revealing--

“People might not even have a computer, or understand the application itself,” said Laura Hanna, a leader of the Debt Collective, an activist coalition of Corinthian students.

It makes one wonder what kind of college would have graduates "who might not have a computer."

[packman]

9. My next door neighbor attended college

bounced around from job to job and eventually was a front-desk clerk at an auto repair place where he wrote tickets for repairs. I took my car in for a brake job and he wrote "break work needed" on the ticket . He attended and got a degree in a religious university.

[demwing]

10. obviously, he was getting too many breaks

and work was needed...

[yeoman6987]

12. I imagine it wasn't Notre Dame or Georgetown