Social Security

That small slice of borrowers shows that the programs aren’t doing enough to protect borrowers from being trapped in a lifetime of debt, according to a report released this week by the National Consumer Law Center and the Student Borrower Protection Center.

Eleven state financial regulators are calling on Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to rescind Trump-era regulations that they say are insulating student loan servicers from more oversight.

Congress wrote a law promising forgiveness to student loan borrowers who make two decades of on-time payments. But that promise has fallen short, according to a new report. Of the roughly two million borrowers on the plan who have been making payments for more than 20 years, only 32 individuals have ever received total cancellation.

While the legislation does not outline any direct student loan relief, lawmakers continue to debate how to remediate the debt crisis. Mark Huelsman is a fellow at the Student Borrower Protection Center and has been researching student debt for years. In an interview with News 3 Reporter Erin Miller, he said, “The student debt crisis is big, and it is growing.”

For years, this has been the animating theory of American student loans. They’re not a shortcut to the middle class or a cheat code, but a high-stakes workaround, a back route, a way to give yourself the bootstraps so you can actually pull yourself up by them. A half-century into this student debt experiment, we need to face a new reality. For millions of Americans, the back route has led them far, far…

For months, borrower advocates have been calling on Congress to include these borrowers as they consider student-loan provisions in the context of coronavirus relief bills. Now, some are urging the Department of Education to use its authority to create a pathway for these borrowers to be included in the payment pause.

When the U.S. government bailed out student loan lenders during the Great Recession, legislators unintentionally set off a series of cascading events that has left more than six million student loan borrowers locked out of a crucial benefit amid the coronavirus pandemic more than 10 years later. Two consumer advocacy groups are pressing the Biden administration to change that.