09/09/2019

Loan Forgiveness Program Continues to Create Headaches

Student loan borrowers aren't getting the help they need

A long-running controversy in the education field involving student loan debt just took another turn. And just like before, that turn has largely prevented thousands of public-sector and nonprofit employees from getting a benefit they were promised more than a decade ago.

This week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a review of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which was the subject of much scrutiny a year ago, after it was revealed that the program, despite tens of thousands of applicants, had only forgiven the student debts of 55 people.

Congress responded by creating a secondary program—Temporary Expanded Public Service Loan Forgiveness—to fix PSLF’s issues. But the GAO report found that even then, when given specific guidance to make TEPSLF as easy to take advantage of as possible, the U.S. Department of Education had only approved 661 of 54,000 requests—a rejection rate of 99 percent. The GAO blamed the situation on a lack of awareness and an application process that was just as arduous as the program it was augmenting.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.