Dept. of Education

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My colleagues and I have the privilege of advising numerous clients on income share agreements (ISAs), including universities, service providers, and institutional investors. So we were excited by reports that the U.S. Department of Education (ED) plans to publish a Federal Register notice for an Experimental Sites Initiative (ESI) that would facilitate ISA programs at…

Last week, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal took the lead in pursing two actions against the U.S. Department of Education related to the Department’s alleged refusals to cooperate with state investigations of student loan servicers and for-profit schools.

On September 16, 2019, New Jersey, along with 16 other attorneys general, including New York, Colorado,…

In less than a year, pre-dispute arbitration agreements will be clearly permissible again now that the Department of Education has finalized its proposal to rescind the Obama administration’s “Borrower Defense” rule issued in November 2016 and replace it with “Institutional Accountability Regulations.”  The final regulations are effective July 1, 2020 and apply to loans disbursed…

Last week, Congressional representatives Maxine Waters, D-CA, Bobby Scott, D-VA, and Elijah Cummings, D-MD, as chairs of committees with oversight responsibility for the student loan servicing market, sent letters to CFPB Director Kathleen Kraninger and Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos about their concerns with the current state of the student loan industry. The letters…

In December 2018, the Department of Education announced that it would begin implementing its “borrower defense” final rule which was published in November 2016.  In addition to its provisions that address a student’s ability to assert a school’s misconduct as a defense to repayment of a federal student loan and its ban on all pre-dispute…

The Department of Education has announced the new federal student loan interest rates for 2019-2020.  For the first time in three years, interest rates on federal student loans will decrease.  Rates for Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans (for undergraduate students) will fall to 4.53 percent, down from 5.05 percent for the 2018-2019 academic year.  …

A Federal Register entry published last week details a proposed data-sharing arrangement between the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Education (DoE) designed to reduce the amount of interest that certain active duty service members pay on federal student loans.

In 2008, Congress amended the Higher Education Act to provide for the removal…

Last month, the Department of Education issued guidance on implementation of its “borrower defense” final rule that was issued in November 2016 and the subject of litigation that resulted in an October 2018 federal district court ruling requiring the Department to implement the rule.

Among the final rule’s provisions is a ban on all predispute…

The White House last week issued an executive order entitled “Executive Order on Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities.”  In addition to pronouncements regarding free speech in the higher education context, the Executive Order makes several policy statements involving federal student lending and directs the Department of Education to…

The Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC)—an organization established by former CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman Seth Frotman—recently published an article examining the Department of Education’s oversight of “lead generators.”  Lead generators are outside entities that help for-profit colleges manage “pre-enrollment activities” such as “recruiting and advising students,” “determining eligibility for federal aid,” and “delivering…