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    Shahien Nasiripour

    Shahien Nasiripour

    Chief Financial and Regulatory Correspondent

  • Troops Can't Trust Student Loan Servicers, Top Regulator Says

    U.S. troops can’t rely on student loan companies, including those working for the Department of Education, to give them accurate information about legal protections they are entitled to, a top federal regulator charged. The stark warning from Holly Petraeus, assistant director for service member affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, accompanied a report the regulator released Tuesday that concluded military personnel continue to be routinely mistreated by companies that process their monthly student loan payments and counsel them on repayment options. Service members have complained to the CFPB over the past three years that their loan servicers lost paperwork, pushed them into default by falsely promising they could postpone payments, failed to provide basic information about repayment plans, and hurt their credit scores by misreporting their loan status to national credit bureaus.

  • Arne Duncan Still Not 'Thrilled' To Aid Students Of Disgraced College Chain

    The Department of Education was “thrilled” to shut down the for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges Inc., Education Secretary Arne Duncan declared Wednesday -- a claim that stands in sharp contrast with his department's frantic efforts last year to save the company. Duncan’s statement to MSNBC also contradicts his department's continued insistence that many former Corinthian students keep paying off their federal student loans. The department estimates that students took out more than $3 billion in federal loans in recent years to attend Corinthian-owned schools.

  • Education Department To Miss Deadline On Helping Student Borrowers

    The U.S. Department of Education is about to miss its July 1 deadline on three key directives from President Barack Obama regarding fair treatment of borrowers struggling with federal student loans. By Wednesday, the Education Department was supposed to set higher standards for its oft-criticized debt collectors and clarify borrowers' rights when they attempt to discharge federal student loans in bankruptcy. Along with the White House Office of Management and Budget, the department was also supposed to have a plan for handling certain borrowers who receive federal disability benefits: Though many are eligible for complete debt forgiveness, some may still be making payments on federal student loans.

  • Fresh Out Of Government, Student Loan Warrior Warns About Major For-Profit College Chain

    The revolving door between federal financial regulators and the industries they oversee doesn't usually spin in the direction of aiding low-income college students trying to learn a trade. ITT Educational Services Inc. is an Indiana-based for-profit college operator that ranks among the nation's largest, enrolling some 51,000 students at Daniel Webster College and ITT Technical Institutes across 143 campuses in 39 states, as of March 31. The company faces pending lawsuits from Chopra's former employer for allegedly swindling students on their student loans and deceiving them about their future job prospects, and from the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly misleading investors.

  • Education Department Vastly Undercounted Troops Overcharged By Student Loan Giant

    New data from the U.S. Department of Justice strongly suggest that the Education Department missed thousands of violations of federal law when it publicly exonerated Navient Corp., one of its favored student loan contractors, of intentionally cheating troops on their federal student loans. In May 2014, the Justice Department filed and settled a lawsuit against Navient accusing the company of deliberately overcharging an initially estimated 60,000 active-duty service members on their federal and private student loans, in violation of federal law. The Justice Department lawsuit prompted an Education Department investigation.

  • Warren Pushes White House To Keep Slavery Ban In Trade Deal

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Thursday decried efforts by the Obama administration to undermine an anti-slavery measure that the Senate approved last week as part of a major trade bill. The provision, authored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), would bar the U.S. from expediting trade deals with governments that the State Department deems to be among the very worst offenders on human trafficking.

  • Elizabeth Warren Agrees With Rush Limbaugh On Trade, And No One's More Surprised Than She Is

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) found herself searching for the right words on Thursday to capture her feelings about sharing a position with conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh, an icon for tea party Republicans, assailed President Barack Obama last week over his trade negotiations with 11 Pacific nations -- something Warren has been doing for months. "I know it is a cliche to say that politics makes strange bedfellows," Warren told reporters on Thursday.

  • Senate Democrats Slam Arne Duncan Over 'Business As Usual' Treatment Of Controversial Contractor

    Last May, after the Justice Department accused one of his contractors of intentionally cheating active-duty troops on their federal student loans, Education Secretary Arne Duncan was asked whether Navient Corp. would lose its lucrative contract. “We are deeply concerned that Navient could have cheated our military families and broke the law, and yet somehow continue to feast off of our borrowers and our taxpayers,” the lawmakers said in a letter dated Tuesday.

  • Defrauded Student Loan Borrowers Face Potential Obama Administration 'Boondoggle'

    Defrauded student loan borrowers seeking relief from the Obama administration are confronting an Education Department process that a senior House Democrat compared to the government’s bungled response to the mortgage robo-signing crisis that shook the U.S. housing market. In the case of robo-signed mortgage documents, bank regulators at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Reserve in 2011 created a time-consuming process to evaluate each borrower’s claim. To Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, the Education Department’s likely approach to student loan borrowers who have been defrauded seems doomed to repeat the mistakes.

  • Faculty Group Accuses NYU Of Putting Renovations Before Student Concerns

    A group of New York University faculty that is critical of the school’s land grab in Manhattan alleges that the university is overcharging its students to fund its real estate acquisitions and excessive pay for its administrators, according to a new report. The three-part report by NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan comes as the university tries to renovate buildings in the city’s Greenwich Village neighborhood over the group's objections. The faculty group, which says it represents more than 400 NYU educators, has said the renovation plan would hurt the community and make life difficult for the hundreds of NYU faculty who live in the area.

  • Consumer Agency Begins Probe Of Student Loan Servicers, Signaling Stronger Rules

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday launched a broad review of the often murky business of student loan servicing, questioning whether the roughly 40 million Americans with student debt are being treated fairly under a patchwork of rules and market forces that could leave them vulnerable to abuse. The review, known formally as a “request for information,” is the clearest sign that the federal consumer agency intends to establish stronger rules governing the roughly $1.2 trillion student debt market. Nearly 90 percent of student debt is overseen by the oft-criticized U.S. Department of Education, and borrowers say dodgy practices are common, bad information rampant, and basic necessities like full payment histories or accurate pay-off amounts often hard to obtain.

  • Student Loan Giant Likely To Be Cleared In Education Department Probe Of Troop-Cheating

    One year after the U.S. Department of Justice accused student loan giant Navient Corp. of intentionally cheating active-duty troops on private and federal student loans, the Education Department is likely to effectively clear the company of lawbreaking. Separate investigations into Navient’s conduct by Education Department staff and Ernst & Young, an outside audit firm the department hired to double-check its own staff’s work, found that the company largely complied with the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, the law the Justice Department exactly one year ago accused Navient of violating, when dealing with troops’ federal student loans, according to two people familiar with the inquiries. Acceptance of the findings by senior Education Department officials would stand in sharp contrast to a May 2014 lawsuit filed by the Justice Department alleging that Navient, and its former owner, SLM Corp., or Sallie Mae, had overcharged troops on their federal student loans in violation of the servicemembers law and made it difficult for troops to access other benefits under the provision.

  • Obama Administration Improperly Denies Student Loan Debt Relief

    Federal law allows students who were defrauded by their colleges into taking out federal student loans to have their debts forgiven. The Obama administration has said repeatedly it will ensure aggrieved borrowers get this form of relief, a commitment that Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell reiterated this week following the bankruptcy filing of troubled for-profit school operator Corinthian Colleges Inc. Colon, a 53-year-old East Harlem resident, says she is stuck with a worthless credential that’s saddled her with more than $51,000 in federal and private student loans.

  • Corinthian Colleges Files For Bankruptcy

    Corinthian Colleges Inc. filed for bankruptcy on Monday, capping a year in which one of the nation's largest for-profit career school chains slowly collapsed under the watch of the U.S. Department of Education amid allegations that it had systematically deceived students with false graduation and job placement rates. Students at Corinthian's schools have received about $4 billion in federal student loans and $2 billion in federal grants since the start of the 2010-2011 academic year, according to Education Department data. Corinthian fell out of favor with the Department of Education last summer over a paperwork dispute, leading to a cash crunch at the company after the department slowed its access to federal financial aid.

  • Obama Administration Considers New 'Roadblocks' For Ex-Corinthian Colleges Students Seeking Debt Relief

    The U.S. Department of Education is considering new hurdles for student loan borrowers seeking to get out of their debts by claiming their schools swindled them. Days after the abrupt shutdown of for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges Inc., the department is discussing additional requirements for debt-forgiveness applications and hiring an outside party to rule on claims made by aggrieved borrowers, according to people briefed on the plans. Outstanding federal student debt has nearly doubled to $1.1 trillion since President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan took office in January 2009, federal data show.

  • Education Department Steers Corinthian Colleges Students To Other Troubled For-Profits

    The U.S. Department of Education is telling thousands of students from now-shuttered for-profit schools owned by Corinthian Colleges Inc. to consider transferring to more than a dozen other for-profit schools also under investigation by federal or state authorities. The department's suggestion follows Corinthian's abrupt shutdown on Monday, which left 16,000 students scrambling for options. In 31 spreadsheets on its website, the Education Department listed at least 13 for-profit schools whose corporate owners were under state or federal investigation for possibly misleading students among "viable transfer opportunities" to Corinthian's 30 locations and its online program.

  • Troubled For-Profit Corinthian Colleges Shutting Down As Education Department Faces Bill

    Corinthian Colleges Inc., once one of the nation's largest chains of for-profit colleges, announced Sunday it is abruptly shutting down after failing to find buyers for its roughly 30 remaining campuses, leaving up to 16,000 students in the lurch and potentially costing the U.S. Department of Education tens of millions of dollars in forgone federal student loan payments. "What these students have experienced is unacceptable," Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell said in a blog post Sunday. The California-based chain at its peak operated more than 120 colleges with more than 110,000 students across North America under the Everest, Wyotech and Heald brands. Last July, under pressure from the Education Department over a paperwork dispute, the company struck a deal with the Obama administration to sell or close all of its campuses over the following six-month period in order to avoid what the Education Department described as an "immediate closure," or exactly what has happened with the company's Sunday announcement.

  • Education Department Nears Deal With Student Loan Giant Over Cheating Troops

    The U.S. Department of Education is nearing a deal with Navient Corp., the student loan giant formerly known as Sallie Mae, over allegations the company cheated active-duty troops on federal student loans, a department official said Thursday. The agreement likely would end the Education Department's much-delayed and heavily-criticized probe into whether the nation’s largest student loan specialist -- a major government contractor -- broke the law that caps interest rates and provides other special financial protections for active-duty members of the military. Thomas Skelly, the department’s acting chief financial officer, told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday that the Education Department was “finalizing” an agreement with Navient that would be completed by May 1.

  • Debt Collectors Lose Lawsuits Against Education Department

    A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Education brought by four of its contracted student loan debt collectors after the department decided not to award them additional business. Judge Francis Allegra of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims tossed the lawsuits in a sealed order, court filings show. The Huffington Post was unable to obtain a copy of the court order on Tuesday.

  • Heald College Fined For Misleading Students About Job Prospects

    Heald College, the jewel of a once-thriving chain of for-profit colleges owned by Corinthian Colleges Inc., misled students and accreditation agencies about graduates’ employment rates and showed a “blatant disregard” for the federal student loan program, the U.S. Department of Education alleged Tuesday. The Education Department said it had found 947 false job placement rates dating back to at least 2010, and slapped Heald with a $29.7 million fine and a ban on enrolling new students.