To amend the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 to extend certain supervisory authority of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection to include assessing compliance with the Military Lending Act.
To establish student loan borrowers' rights to basic consumer protections, reasonable and flexible repayment options, access to earned credentials, and effective loan cancellation in exchange for public service, and for other purposes.
American higher education faces many difficulties, not least soaring costs and the decline of academic freedom. Administrative bloat, subsidized by the federal government, makes both these problems worse, according to a commentary in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. A 2014 analysis by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found that from 1987 to 2012, the higher-education sector added more than half a million administrators. Their numbers have doubled relative to academic faculty. Financed in large part with federally subsidized tuition, this rise of administrators siphons money from the core functions of academic institutions. Colleges and universities have shifted teaching duties from full-time professors to part-time nontenured adjuncts who earn paltry wages. Congress can combat this transformation of the university by reforming student-loan programs. The U.S. government offers student loans without regard to the ratio of administrators to full-time tenured faculty at the school receiving the funds. When authorizing student loans, Congress should take into account the ratio of administrators to full-time tenured faculty. The amount of a student loan, and the interest rate payable on it, should come on a gently sliding scale dependent on the ratio of administrators to full-time tenured faculty at the institution that will benefit from the loan. At one end of this sliding scale, students attending a school with few administrators could get the largest loans at the lowest possible interest rate, and at the other end students attending an institution where administrators are relatively numerous could get only the smallest possible loans at the highest possible rate. Read more. (Subscription required.)
*The views expressed in this commentary are from the author/publication cited, are meant for informative purposes only, and are not an official position of ABI.
The issue of student loan debt and bankruptcy is the first problem addressed in the Final Report of the ABI Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy. Click here to download your copy.
Rap artist Lil Kim says that she has been able to get her finances in order and says she no longer needs help from the court to protect her from creditors, TheBlast.com reported. According to court documents, the rapper is asking a federal judge to dismiss her bankruptcy. Lil Kim filed for chapter 13 bankruptcy back in May 2018. She says the purpose was to save her New Jersey mansion from being foreclosed on. The rapper said that since she filed for bankruptcy, and had time to obtain a lawyer, she has been able to get a loan modification for her home. Lil Kim failed to make her June 2018 mortgage payment of $10,155.47 on her mansion in Alpine, N.J.
The Department of Education released information on May 21 about how much debt students are taking on to earn degrees from various academic programs at American colleges and universities. The data shows one sector in particular with outsize debt: graduate school, according to a New York Times commentary. In releasing the college loan data, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos described it as part of President Trump’s executive order to address the student debt crisis. Access to the loan amounts, she said, will allow students to make informed decisions about choosing colleges. At the same time, the department is preparing to uproot the Obama administration’s approach to the debt crisis, by repealing regulations that cut college programs out of the federal financial aid system if students don’t earn enough money to pay their loans back. Within the graduate school sector, the fast-growing master’s degree market is replete with debt levels that make little sense. An accredited university can essentially create a master’s degree in anything, set whatever price it likes, start signing up students for federal loans, and market the program as “accredited.” Read more.
The issue of student loan debt and bankruptcy is the first problem addressed in the Final Report of the ABI Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy. Click here to download your copy.
