Free Republic

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida doesn't support broad student-loan forgiveness. But he does think bankruptcy should be an option for borrowers who cannot afford to pay off their debt. "It's wrong to say that a truck driver should have to pay off the debt of somebody who got a degree in gender studies. This is not the taxpayers that should have to do that," he added. "At the same time, I have sympathy for some of these students because I think they were sold a bill of goods. I think these universities knew that they could take all this federal...

No one spoke of college students being trapped in debt until rather recently. Prior to the advent of federal student aid programs, college wasn’t expensive, few Americans regarded it as important to their lives, and what borrowing they did for it was through private institutions that were careful not to lend where they perceived too much risk. If in, say, 1971, someone had forecast that in fifty years, students would owe well over a trillion dollars in debt and many would face ruined lives because of their borrowing for college, he’d have been laughed at. So, how did we get...

Sallie Mae is growing its customer service operation in New Castle County with 285 new jobs. The company will employ a total of 1,000 workers in the county. “We’re glad Sallie Mae has chosen to significantly expand its operations here in Delaware,” said Gov. John Carney. “Delaware has an experienced, skilled financial sector workforce that is perfectly suited for this expansion. And we’re proud to support Sallie Mae, and the Delawareans who work there, as the company continues to put down roots here in our great state.” The new jobs are part of a deal with the Delaware Division of...

Just days after reports emerged that student loan defaults are soaring, which is undoubtedly due to some combination of, among other things, poor job prospects for the millions of snowflakes who graduate each year with their $200,000 educations in anthropology and the moral hazard created by liberal politicians constantly calling for student debts to be 'forgiven' (a.k.a. forcefully jammed down the throats of taxpayers), the Trump administration has revoked rules put in place by Obama that barred student debt collectors from charging penalty fees on past-due loans. Originating from the Department of Justice, the "Dear Colleague" letter (full letter included...

Hillary Rodham Clinton last week made a pitch to attract young voters with her plan to ease student loan debt, but the move glosses over her past coziness with the loan industry and the deregulation enacted under the Clinton administration in the 1990s that have contributed to today’s soaring student debt levels.The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination wants to cut interest rates on student debt, which has spiked in the past decade to more than $1.2 trillion. Big banks and Sallie Mae, the student loan agency formerly run by the federal government, hold much of that debt. As a...

President Barack Obama says college affordability isn’t just important for students, but for the nation as well. Obama told thousands gathered at Georgia Tech Tuesday that he is trying to make it easier for them to pay back student loans. He is aiming to clamp down on the private companies that service federal student debt. He acknowledged the modest move isn’t a “silver bullet.” But he says America needs the world’s most skilled and best educated workforce to compete in the global economy. …

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — Some 60,000 active-duty service members could their get money back from lender Sallie Mae Bank for overpaying on their student loans, the Department of Justice said Tuesday. Sallie Mae agreed to pay nearly $100 million in fines to federal regulators for overcharging military members as far back as 2005 on government student loans. Federal law discounts interest rates on all student loans for active duty military service members, capping them at 6%. Sallie Mae not only failed to discount the rates, but also made it tough for some service members to prove they qualified for the lower...

Congressional Republicans are pushing to overhaul the government’s student loan program, as both Democrats and the GOP blame each other for letting interest rates on the subsidized loans double last Monday. In the weekly Republican radio address Saturday, congresswoman Lynn Jenkins of Kansas is pressing Senate Democrats to act on legislation that ties the rate to the financial markets, similar to a proposal from President Barack Obama. …

NEW YORK (MainStreet)—When SLM Corp., the largest education financing entity in the country more commonly known as Sallie Mae, announced in January that profits for the fourth quarter of 2012 decreased to $343 million, from $506 million earned in the same quarter in 2011, it was a conspicuous reminder of how lucrative the student loan business is....

In doing some research on coupon websites, we discovered that Sallie Mae is using what appears to be a harmless coupon website called Upromise to collect information on our pre-college age youth and sell it for a profit

Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, Republican candidate in the 11th Congressional District, blasted Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski on Friday for voting for legislation that cost employees their jobs at Sallie Mae. Roughly 100 customer service employees at Sallie Mae in Hanover Township will lose their jobs in mid-July, the company announced Thursday. The layoffs are occurring after Congress passed health reform legislation and President Barack Obama signed it into law in March. Part of new law makes the federal government the direct lender of student loans. Previously, the government subsidized Sallie Mae, banks and private firms which originated many...

HANOVER TWP. – One hundred customer service workers at the Sallie Mae center in Hanover Township have been informed that they’ll lose their jobs July 16. The news wasn’t unexpected. Just last month the Reston, Va.-based student lending and loan processing company announced that 2,500 total workers will be let go by the end of 2011, including all 1,200 workers at the company’s centers in Killeen, Texas, and Panama City, Fla. An e-mail to The Times Leader from someone whose family members work at the Hanover Township facility said the announcement was made Thursday. Employees will be given a severance...

SLM Corp., the largest U.S. student loan company, reported net income of $240 million, its third straight quarterly profit, as provisions for loan losses fell and late payments slowed. First-quarter net income of 45 cents a share compared with a loss of $21.1 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier, according to a statement distributed today by Business Wire. The company was predicted to earn 29 cents, excluding some items, according to the average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. SLM said its “core” earnings were 39 cents.

Powerhouse student loan provider Sallie Mae says layoffs are imminent as a result of President Obama's new student loan overhaul. "This legislation will force Sallie Mae to reduce our 8,600-person workforce by 2,500," Conwey Casillas, Vice President of Sallie Mae Public Affairs, said in a statement to Fox News. SNIP "The student loan provisions buried in the health care legislation intentionally eliminate valuable default prevention services and private sector jobs at a time when our country can least afford to lose them," Casillas told Fox News. Sallie Mae was trying to garner support for an alternative, which the company said...

Fellow Hoosiers: I submit this post on behalf of a friend of my family, who works for Sallie Mae, here in Indianapolis. I am asking for your thoughtful consideration in this matter, and if you agree with what's presented in the proposal on the http://www.protectindianajobs.com website, to please sign the electronic petition. The issue is this. There is legislation before the U.S. Senate right now, that would make all student loans government-run. If this legislation is signed into law, Sallie Mae would be severly affected, and undoubtedly hundreds of jobs would be taken from this state. Let's stop this madness,...

WASHINGTON — The private student lending industry and its allies in Congress are maneuvering to thwart a plan by President Obama to end a subsidized loan program and redirect billions of dollars in bank profits to scholarships for needy students. The plan is the main money-saving component of Mr. Obama’s education agenda, which includes a sweeping overhaul of financial aid programs. The Congressional Budget Office says replacing subsidized loans made by private banks with direct government lending would save $94 billion over the next decade, money that Mr. Obama would use to expand Pell grants for the poorest students. But...

Revamping of student loan program could reduce need for private lenders. Hundreds of Luzerne County jobs could be in jeopardy if Congress approves President Barack Obama’s plan for changing the federal student loan program. In his budget proposal, Obama recommended that the U.S. Department of Education administer all of the federal loans for students by 2010, saving a claimed $4 billion a year. The change would drastically reduce the need for private lenders including Sallie Mae, which employs more than 700 people in its Hanover Township offices. Sallie Mae is one of the nation’s largest providers of federal and private...

Renewing a battle waged during the Clinton administration, President Barack Obama proposed to eliminate private lenders from the student-loan market and have the federal government make all such loans directly. In his spending blueprint for fiscal 2010, Mr. Obama said the shift to the Department of Education's so-called direct-lending program would save more than $4 billion a year in subsidies paid to private lenders and eliminate uncertainty for students "because of turmoil in the financial markets." Direct loans only accounted for about 20% of the $68.2 billion in new federal loans during for the 2007-2008 school year, but interest in...

Nov 27, 2004Colleges Scramble To Recruit Latinos By CHRIS ECHEGARAYcechegaray@tampatrib.com TAMPA - Elida Molina spent hours poring over the Internet her senior year, searching for information on college financial aid and scholarships, her frustrations mounting. She had little support at home. Her mother, a migrant worker with seven children, dropped out after middle school in Mexico and didn't put a premium on education. ``I was stressing over the college applications,'' said Molina, 19. ``I was not good with the standardized tests, the SATs and ACTs, and then you have my mother not really understanding how hard it was to...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Y'Hica Institute for the Visual Arts in London appeared to have all the credentials for certification in a student loan program administered by the U.S. Department of Education - a Web site, a school president, a consulting firm and students who needed financial help. Unknown to federal officials who certified Y'Hica, the school didn't exist. But this wasn't just another fraud on the government. This school was an undercover sting operation by congressional investigators, who wanted to learn how closely education officials monitored aid applications from foreign schools. The investigators from Congress' General Accounting Office had...