{"id":30519,"date":"2017-03-28T15:21:39","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T19:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=30519"},"modified":"2017-03-28T15:21:39","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T19:21:39","slug":"the-student-loan-problem-gets-more-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=30519","title":{"rendered":"The Student Loan Problem Gets More Interesting"},"content":{"rendered":"

On March 20, 2017, Judicial Watch<\/a> reported the following:<\/p>\n

Judicial Watch announced that it today filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA<\/a>) lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia<\/a> against the U.S. Department of Education<\/a> seeking records relating to then Obama administration\u2019s \u201ccoding error\u201d that resulted in masking that most borrowers are failing to pay down their federally-subsidized student loans (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Education<\/a><\/em> (No. 1:17-cv-00501)).<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Obama administration\u2019s Obamacare legislation also included provisions that resulted in the federal takeover<\/a> of the student loan<\/a> industry, which radically increased taxpayer subsidies of higher education loans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Education Department<\/a> acknowledged in early January that the coding error resulted in wildly inaccurate College Scorecard<\/a> repayment rates. The significance is substantial, according to The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The department played down the mistake, but the new average three-year repayment rate has declined by 20 percentage points to 46%. This is huge. It means that fewer than half of undergraduate borrowers at the average college are paying down their debt.<\/strong><\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last month the Government Accountability Office (GAO)<\/a> projected that loan forgiveness for borrowers enrolled in the plans could cost upward of $108 billion. GAO rapped the department for underestimating the costs due to \u201cinsufficient quality controls\u201d and \u201cunreasonable assumptions.\u201d It\u2019s possible the putative \u201ccoding error\u201d is connected to this ill-management.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the Journal<\/em> notes, \u201cThe other scandal is that the Obama Administration used the inflated Scorecard repayment data as a pretext to single out for-profit colleges for punitive regulation.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Judicial Watch filed today\u2019s lawsuit after the department failed to respond to a January 29, 2017, FOIA request for:<\/strong><\/p>\n