The Administration Takes Action to Help More Borrowers Manage Student Debt
Today the Administration announced a multifaceted plan to protect and support student loan borrowers. The announcement includes commitments to improve loan counseling, institute clear servicing standards and disclosures, and to help more borrowers enroll in income-driven repayment plans.
Students should have the best information in the right format to make critical decisions about how to pay for college. Loan counseling can play an integral role in helping student loan borrowers make wise decisions and avoid delinquency and default. The Department of Education’s online loan counseling tools serve 6.5 million students a year, and the Administration’s plan to make improvements based on input from borrowers and other stakeholders will help more students make the choices that are right for them. For TICAS’ recommendations to improve loan counseling that do not require legislation, click here.
Student loan servicers are paid more than $800 million a year to help borrowers access the repayment options, protections, and benefits that come with federal loans. Yet even so, a record 7.9 million borrowers are in default, and there are more than two million federal student loan borrowers over 90 days delinquent. Servicing failures, exacerbated by a lack of standards and misaligned incentives, are widespread. Once implemented and enforced, the standards outlined by the Administration – as well as the commitment to seek input on them – will make a huge difference for borrowers.
Providing borrowers in repayment with better information at the right time is a clear-cut next step. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Payback Playbook would share personalized information with borrowers to improve their understanding of repayment options, a positive move in the right direction. For TICAS’ recommendations on student loan servicing, click here.
Strengthening servicing standards by fully implementing the Administration’s new Student Loan Borrower Rights would improve servicing for borrowers in the following ways: (1) ensure servicers provide accurate and actionable information; (2) establish a clear set of expectations for minimum requirements for communication and services with borrowers; and (3) hold servicers accountable to borrowers and taxpayers. And, when servicers fail to do the right thing, the Department’s forthcoming complaint system can help ensure that borrowers’ concerns are addressed and resolved. We have recommended that the complaint system be public and searchable, connected to the complaint systems used by other federal and state agencies, and made clearer and easier to use.
Lastly, a key part of ensuring that fewer borrowers default on their loans is boosting borrower awareness of repayment plans that tie monthly payments to income. Our Project on Student Debt developed the policy framework and led the campaign that resulted in enactment of the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan, which has been available to borrowers since 2009. The Administration announced a new goal today to enroll two million more borrowers into income-driven plans like IBR. Although income-driven repayment is not the best choice for every borrower, clearly many more borrowers could benefit from tying their monthly payments to an affordable share of their income and knowing that they will not be repaying their student loans for the rest of their lives. The Debt Challenge, the Administration’s campaign to promote employer outreach and boost awareness of repayment options, will help even more borrowers make better informed repayment decisions. We will do our part to get the word out by contacting more than 100,000 subscribers to our website, IBRinfo.org, and sharing information with our Twitter followers and Facebook friends to remind them about income-driven repayment plans.
As the Administration moves forward on taking action to help borrowers manage student debt, we look forward to seeing these steps, tools, and standards put in place so that fewer borrowers end up delinquent or in default.
