Reports

Reports

Sep 10, 2021

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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Reports

Aug 24, 2021

Co-Opting California Courts: How Private Creditors Have Turned the Judiciary Into a Predatory Student Debt Collection Machine

In a report, SBPC fellow Claire Johnson Raba, a SBPC fellow shows the effect of predatory private student loan collection practices on borrowers in California. With creditors dragging borrowers into court for debts they often do not owe and lacking the documents necessary to back up their claims, the report lays out the harmful long-term impacts to borrowers’ credit and finances.

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Reports

Jul 28, 2021

Mapping Exploitation: Examining For-Profit Colleges as Financial Predators in Communities of Color

This report examines how predatory for-profit institutions are geographically targeting communities of color in cities in the Upper Midwest and across the country. By targeting prospective Black and Latino students with dubious educational programs and high levels of debt, the report shows how these institutions are systematically stripping wealth from these communities.

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Reports

Jun 11, 2021

Pushing Predatory Products: How Public Universities are Partnering with Unaccountable Contractors to Drive Students Toward Risky Private Debt and Credit

This report is the result of an investigation revealing that public colleges and universities nationwide are driving students toward expensive, predatory student debt.

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Reports

May 25, 2021

Big Data and Big Errors: Why Giving Furnishers a Free Pass Undermines the Credit Reporting System and Denies Consumers Access to Justice

This report from the SBPC and Berger Montague attorney John Albanese examines how creditors, including student loan companies, routinely furnish inaccurate information to consumer reporting agencies like Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.

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Reports

Apr 22, 2021

Discrimination is Unfair: Interpreting UDA(A)P to Prohibit Discrimination

This report from the SBPC and Relman Colfax attorneys Stephen Hayes and Kali Schellenberg, examines how laws prohibiting unfair, deceptive (and sometimes abusive) acts and practices (“UDA(A)Ps”) can be applied to combat discrimination in the student loan market and beyond.

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Investigations Reports

Apr 8, 2021

SBPC Investigation Reveals New Evidence of How the Student Loan Industry and the Department of Education Failed Borrowers During the Pandemic

The findings of this investigation include tens of thousands of never-before-seen instances in which federal student loan servicers inaccurately told credit reporting agencies that borrowers whose payments had been paused at the outset of COVID had stopped paying on their student loans.

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Reports

Mar 26, 2021

Private Student Loan Collections Report: New York Spotlight

In a report, the SBPC, Young Invincibles, Community Service Society of New York, and New Yorkers for Responsible Lending show how private student loan collection practices are harming borrowers across the country, including a spotlight on New York borrowers. With creditors dragging borrowers into court for debt they often do not owe and lacking the documents necessary to back up their claims, the report lays out how these companies are manipulating courts into…

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Investigations Reports

Mar 25, 2021

Advocates Warn That ISA Provider Stride Funding’s Lending Model is Potentially Harming Students of Color and Violating Fair Lending Law

This report is the result of an investigation that reveals potentially harmful business practices and possible fair lending risks by Stride Funding, an education finance firm that originates and markets Income Share Agreements (ISAs).

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Reports

Mar 8, 2021

Education Department’s Decades-Old Debt Trap: How the Mismanagement of Income Driven Repayment Locked Millions in Debt

This issue brief highlights newly public data obtained by NCLC from the Department of Education showing that only 32 borrowers have ever qualified for debt cancellation through the federal government’s IDR program, even as approximately 2 million borrowers remain trapped in decades-old debts.

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