The program that is suppose to forgive student loan debt for those who work in eduction for a decade DOES NOT do so…
Less than 1% of the 28,000 people who applied for forgiveness have had their requests approved recently…
Up to 80,000 have been refused the benefit they signed up for with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program…
FedLoan, which is the face of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, has received over $1.3 Billion to run the program.
The United States Education Department has virtually nothing to increase the approval rates on the program which FeLoan has not be taken task on its issues….
The Education Sec. Betsy DeVos isn’t gonna be any help….
A Federal judge is on her case for not straightening out problems with another program and has fin ed the Education Dept. for inaction and could put DeVos in jail….
Congress has tried to pass legislation to deal with the issues at FedLoan, but the company just keeps rolling along making money while those in the program pay up for something their government promised them , but isn’t holding up their part of the deal…
This IS the American Government doing something that would put an individual in jail or a company out of business…
Fewer than 1 percent of those who have applied for relief under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program have been deemed eligible. Lawsuits are proliferating, along with dashed hopes.
“We didn’t create a puzzle or a contest,” Representative Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia and the chairman of the House Education Committee, said in exasperation at a recent hearing on the program. “The odds of somebody getting through this process — they’d be better off buying lottery tickets.”
More than 80,000 professionals like Ms. Finlaw have been denied the promised relief, through bureaucratic snafus, confusion over complex rules or just poor management. The first deadline came and went in 2017, and fewer than 1 percent of the 28,000 applicants-received anything. Congress rushed to create an emergency “fix” fund last year — and it too had a dismal 99 percent rejection rate.
The Education Department maintains that it is carrying out the law as passed — and it was messy and filled with complicated requirements that borrowers and lenders have struggled to understand. The vast majority of denials happened because people did not enroll in a loan or repayment plan that qualified, even if their chosen professions did, according to government auditors. Most were not told of the error until the rejection notice’s arrival.
Democrats and other critics say the Education Department has made no effort to improve what is within its control. The single loan servicer hired by the agency to manage the program has gone unpunished, despite years of criticism, according to lawsuits and government audits. That servicer, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, has been paid $1.3 billion over the past decade.
“In government, you’re actually supposed to solve problems,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has sued the Education Department. “And when you see that less than 1 percent approval rating, that should be a four-alarm fire.” (Last week, 21 attorneys general — including one Republican, Lawrence Wasden of Idaho — filed a brief supporting the union’s position.)
Image…Credit…Tom Brenner for The New York Times