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The Education Department has quietly and drastically changed its contract requirements for outsourcing student loan servicing in a way that tips the scales for Navient, one of the nation's largest loan servicers: americanoversight.org/betsy-devos-wa…
Now, student loan servicers applying for contracts only need to disclose consumer protection violations from the past 5 years, not 7. And it just so happens that Navient's settlement for having violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act was 5 years and 1 month ago.
In that case, Navient had been illegally overcharging U.S. service members, and in its settlement pledged to return $60 million to borrowers. But now the government can no longer consider this full history of wrongdoing in the procurement process. americanoversight.org/betsy-devos-wa…
By altering one sentence buried deep in thousands of pages of contract requirements, Secretary Betsy DeVos and her team gave the world a glimpse of the corruption at the core of our $1.5 trillion student loan market.
We're asking the Education Department for answers about how this change was made, who was involved in the decision-making process, and whether Navient’s army of lobbyists and lawyers exerted improper influence over this billion-dollar decision: americanoversight.org/document/foia-…
Evaluating Navient’s past abuses is critical. Just two years ago, the CFPB sued Navient for "failing borrowers at every stage of repayment,” including by “harm[ing] the credit of disabled borrowers, including severely injured veterans." consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsr…
