Resource Category: Reports

Press, Reports

Beyond Fresh Start: Addressing the Flaws of the Current Student Loan Collection System

The Student Borrower Protection Center’s paper series on the flaws of the current system of student loan default and collections in the U.S.

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Reports

Collection At All Costs: Examining the Intersection of Mass Incarceration and the Student Debt Crisis

This report documents the findings of a joint SBPC-NCLC investigation indicating that servicing issues and aspects inherent to incarceration lead to huge financial problems for incarcerated borrowers.

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Reports

Customer Disservice: Examining Maximus, The Federal Contractor That Just Became The Largest Student Loan Company In The World

This report details the Student Borrower Protection Center and Communications Workers of America’s joint investigation into Maximus, the world’s largest student debt company.

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Reports

Restoring the Promise of Income-Driven Repayment: An IDR Waiver Proposal

In a whitepaper, the SBPC, the National Consumer Law Center, and the Center for Responsible Lending offer a proposal to the Biden administration to fix income-driven repayment via the creation of an “IDR waiver.” This waiver would cut through the red tape that has long stymied the IDR program and deliver a pathway out of student debt by giving borrowers credit for time in repayment.

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Reports

2021 SBPC Highlights Report

This report highlights some of the critical work the SBPC has been able to accomplish over the past year alongside dedicated advocates and borrowers throughout the country.

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Reports

Driving Into a Dead End: Why IDR Has Failed Millions with Decades-Old Debts

This report synthesizes evidence identifying various glaring warning signs that Income-Driven Repayment is failing millions of borrowers who have been in repayment for decades on federal student loans—and that it is slated to continue doing so for years to come.

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Reports

Driving Inequity: Are IDR’s Documentation Requirements Hurting Borrowers of Color?

This report examines the role that the use of alternative documentation of income plays in driving racial disparities in access to Income-Driven Repayment for student loan borrowers.

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Reports

Driving Runaway Debt: How IDR’s Current Design Buries Borrowers Under Billions of Dollars in Unaffordable Interest

This report highlights how the design of the main protection meant to deliver affordability to federal student loan borrowers, Income-Driven Repayment (IDR), ignores the widespread effects that runaway student loan balances have across borrowers’ financial lives.

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Reports

Driving Unaffordability: How Income-Driven Repayment Currently Fails to Deliver Financial Security to Student Loan Borrowers

This report highlights how the payment formulas currently underlying Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) can harm low to middle-income borrowers, forcing them to choose between meeting basic needs and paying their monthly student loan bills.

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Reports

Driving Down Distress? The Principles & Incomplete History of Income-Driven Repayment

This report examines the history of Income-Driven Repayment (IDR), identifies its key founding principles, the ways that policymakers have tried to meet them, and how the current design of the protection has fallen short of achieving its original goals.

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