Teachers Union sues Department of Education over PSLF

[canadianoutlaw]

"The American Federation of Teachers is planning to file the lawsuit Thursday in federal court. In a draft of the complaint obtained by NPR, the union is asking the court to order the department to fix the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program so that it meets legal standards. It's also asking the department to come up with an appeals process for people who believe they have been treated unfairly."

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/11/739860400/broken-promises-teachers-sue-u-s-over-student-loans-that-werent-forgiven

Thank goodness "wealthy MDs" are not mentioned in this coverage of the PSLF.

This program is going to be a huge headache for the DOE.

[MPMD]

i think there's going to be way more of this going forward and it's depressing that the DOE is going to be arguing against borrowers like this teacher.

all of you who are all worked about student loan forgiveness ideas take note. where do you think these people who got screwed out of PSLF by clerical mistakes are going to turn?

[ENT Doc]

MPMD wrote:

where do you think these people who got screwed out of PSLF by clerical mistakes are going to turn?

Click to expand...

Are there really a bunch of clerical mistakes going on, or is it that people just didn't read the fine print and aren't getting something they thought they had coming to them?

[MPMD]

ENT Doc wrote:

MPMD wrote:

where do you think these people who got screwed out of PSLF by clerical mistakes are going to turn? 

Click to expand…

Are there really a bunch of clerical mistakes going on, or is it that people just didn’t read the fine print and aren’t getting something they thought they had coming to them?

Click to expand...

i don't think we know for sure how it shakes out.

i think we know for sure how these borrowers are going to feel/react and when can have some pretty good guesses about how happy they are going to be.

[legobikes]

Not that I have a lot of confidence in Fedloan, but I'm fairly sure there are going to be far more issues on the borrower end. I think the statistics from last year showed that 2% of borrowers actually qualified? I bet the real number would be something like, 2.5% accounting for some errors on Fedloan's part.

[CordMcNally]

As much as I like to blame and fault the government for their inefficiencies, I would wager that most of the blame likely lays with the borrowers.

[Tim]

I can safely say administrative costs for this program are going to go through the roof. Taxpayers will foot the bill. Our government administratively is extremely incompetent. Duhhh!

[childay]

ENT Doc wrote:

MPMD wrote:

where do you think these people who got screwed out of PSLF by clerical mistakes are going to turn?

Click to expand…

Are there really a bunch of clerical mistakes going on, or is it that people just didn’t read the fine print and aren’t getting something they thought they had coming to them?

Click to expand...

Based on my past interactions with student loan servicers and their amazingly incompetent employees I would be very worried about them correctly administering the forgiveness program.  If I had any loans left that is.

[Lordosis]

I remember hearing about the program when I first graduated medical School however it was in its infancy then. I remember thinking there's no way this will hold on for 10 years. I did not give it much thought after that. I forgot about it until after I paid off my loans and found WCI. Now I hear about it all the time!

[ENT Doc]

childay wrote:

ENT Doc wrote:

MPMD wrote:

where do you think these people who got screwed out of PSLF by clerical mistakes are going to turn?

Click to expand…

Are there really a bunch of clerical mistakes going on, or is it that people just didn’t read the fine print and aren’t getting something they thought they had coming to them?

Click to expand…

Based on my past interactions with student loan servicers and their amazingly incompetent employees I would be very worried about them correctly administering the forgiveness program.  If I had any loans left that is.

Click to expand...

I also wouldn't put it past people to not read the fine print and then want out of something regardless.  Our entire housing crisis was built around countless neglect of these details.

[Doc Spouse]

76k in student loans as a public school teacher.  From the story, I can't tell if that number was the original amount, or the amount she still owes after 10 years of payments.  Either way... yikes.

[ACN]

I did PSLF until I started to actually having to make payments in residency, then refinanced to $0 payments with Link capital. I knew I wanted private practice, but also figured it was going to be a headache due to the incompetent nature of the government.

I remember the headaches trying to consolidate into the PSLF program, them missing loans, not counting payments. How anyone survives that incompetence for ten years is remarkable.

[hightower]

Doc Spouse wrote:

76k in student loans as a public school teacher.  From the story, I can’t tell if that number was the original amount, or the amount she still owes after 10 years of payments.  Either way… yikes.

Click to expand...

Many teacher jobs prefer masters degrees now. It's pretty easy to hit that kind of debt with undergrad plus graduate school debt.  My sister is a school child psychologist and has over 100k of student debt now.  She's been paying into the program for 7 years or so and this is the result of interest accumulating all those years.  What's sad is that they were told by school financial offices that the PSLF program was something they could rely on to get rid of their debt after paying their loans faithfully for 10 years.  It SEEMED like a decent idea with that kind of program in place.  If you're 18-22 years old and everyone around you is doing the same thing and you want to go into a career you enjoy and it just so happens that it requires a decent amount of student debt to accomplish it and you're being told that there's a way to pay it off with federal help...it's hard to blame these people for getting into trouble if you look at it from that perspective.

I sympathize with many who are now finding out that only 1% of applications are being approved for pay off.  They're not all fools with useless degrees.  Many of them are smart, highly educated and hard working professionals who don't make a lot of money but contribute greatly to our society.  We should all be very concerned about the potential downstream effects of this program failing.

I hope the teachers union is able to make an impact with their law suit.  As a society we need to help people get out of this debt while at the same time reforming the laws that allowed this problem to occur in the first place.  It's going to be expensive, but it will be more expensive if we do nothing and let the problem continue to fester.

[hightower]

I don't know about the rest of you, but this made my stomach turn...

"And I remember sitting at the table watching my kids running around and playing and just thinking, man, I am stuck with this now," Menzel says. Thoughts of "the freedom that would come with being released of the student loan debt kind of came crashing in at that moment," she adds.

Having been in a situation where I'm buried in debt and stressed beyond belief thinking there's no way out (before I found WCI of course), I can't imagine how horrific it would be to then find this out on top of it all.

 

 

[Tim]

@hightower,
I hope we are saying the same thing.
“ As a society we need to help people get out of this debt while at the same time reforming the laws that allowed this problem to occur in the first place. It’s going to be expensive, but it will be more expensive if we do nothing and let the problem continue to fester.”

The administrative screwups need to be fixed.
If loans qualified and employment qualified and 120 payments are made, give the loan forgiveness.
As a society, assistance is needed to help individuals get an easy and accurate picture. Leaving the burden and responsibility on the borrower for administrative screwups beyond their control is unacceptable.
Loans, employment, payments. Each is simple. Accept proof and move on.