The U.S. Government Is Collecting Student Loans It Promised to Forgive
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Shane Satterfield, a roofer who owes more than $30,000 in debt for an associate’s degree in computer science from Corinthian Colleges holds his diploma in Atlanta. “I graduated in April at the top of my class, with honors,” says Satterfield, “And I can’t get a job paying over $8.50 an hour.”
The Obama administration has been actively seeking loan payments from thousands of former students eligible for a debt-forgiveness program.
The U.S. Department of Education has two quite different roles in the lives of indebted former students. The same bureaucracy that must safeguard taxpayer dollars by collecting $1.1 trillion in loans also oversees the nation’s largest-ever effort to forgive student debt.
These dual roles have culminated in a strange situation. The Obama administration has repeatedly promised that borrowers eligible to have their student loans cancelled would be reimbursed for “every penny.” But for months, the Education Department has been actively working to collect on federal student debt owed by tens of thousands of former students at Corinthian Colleges Inc., which filed for bankruptcy in 2015 under a cloud of fraud investigations. It is clear that government officials, working under their own guidelines, have reason to believe at least some of these same debts should be forgiven. When companies have similarly hounded borrowers to repay debt without disclosing that borrowers do not owe it, they have been charged by federal and state regulators with violating the law…
The U.S. Government Is Collecting Student Loans It Promised to Forgive
