The Ministry of Education has launched a new website to help defrauded student loan borrowers apply for debt relief. It provides details on exactly what borrowers should include in their applications and what makes them eligible. Although this website may facilitate the application process, many defrauded borrowers are still waiting for relief. Something is loading.
Thanks for recording!
Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed on the go. download app
If student borrowers believe they have been defrauded by a school they attended, it may have become easier for them to get relief.
Last week, President Joe Biden’s Education Department launched a new website to help student loan borrowers submit Borrower’s Defense to Claims – a type of claim for those who think that a school has misled them or engaged in certain misconduct in violation of the law. Approval of these claims means that the department will discharge any debt incurred by the student to attend the school in question.
The new website aims to make this application process easier. It includes information on why borrowers seek Borrower Defence, the type of misconduct eligible for debt relief, specific details on what information borrowers must include in their claims, and what happens after a borrower’s request.
“The new Borrower Defense webpage is filled with tips and advice to help borrowers successfully complete their applications and get the loan relief they’re entitled to,” said Richard Cordray, director of the Federal Bureau of Defense. student aid, in a statement to CNN, which first reported the launch of the website.
“For everyone who lost time, money and the promise of an education, we will continue to work to heal them,” Cordray said.
A section of Federal Student Aid’s new Borrower Defense website detailing what information to include in a claim. Federal Student Aid
The website says borrowers can “submit the strongest possible borrower defense claim” by providing as much detail as possible and addressing all required elements of a claim. This includes evidence that the school has engaged in material misrepresentation of its programs; whether there was a prior judgment against the school that found it violated the la; or if the school has breached a contract.
Since Biden took office, his education department has taken a number of steps to provide relief to defrauded borrowers who have been waiting for their applications to be approved for years.
Under former President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, borrower defense claims had a 99.4% denial rate and accumulated a large backlog, leading the secretary to l education of Biden, Miguel Cardona, to streamline the approval process. He has since carried out the largest group endorsement of borrower defense claims yet, erasing $5.8 billion in student debt last year for 560,000 borrowers defrauded by the big for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges. — and later made a similar $3.9 billion group discharge for former ITT Technical Institute students.
Yet some borrowers continue to remain in limbo for this relief. Insider previously spoke to Kevin, a student borrower who was part of the Corinthian Group dump. Cardona told those borrowers their debt would be “cancelled immediately”, but six months later Kevin – who asked that his last name be withheld for privacy reasons – was still waiting, and he said the Uncertainty was frustrating as his debt remained on his credit report.
“In my world, immediately means immediately,” Kevin said Nov. 18 during the June announcement. “It’s been 168 days since they sent this email, and then this email says it will take a while. So if we take the definition of ‘immediately’ at ‘a certain time’, and if ‘immediately’ “was 168 days, what is ‘sometimes?'”