Student Borrower Protection Center
The Student Borrower Protection Center is an American nonprofit organization aimed at protecting borrowers of student loans and improving the student loan system.
History
The Student Borrower Protection Center was founded in late 2018 by Seth Frotman, former student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Mike Pierce, former lead higher education and consumer protection adviser at the bureau; and Bonnie Latreille, a former advisor to Frotman at the bureau. They formed the Student Borrower Protection Center to address what they perceived as the Trump administration’s favoritism toward the student loan industry with an aim of assisting student loan borrowers and reducing the growing amount of student debt held by Americans, stating that “the federal government hasn’t just walked away from the fight on behalf of borrowers, it is actually arming the other side.” The group also announced a partnership with the University of California, Irvine School of Law aimed at driving academic research on the effects of the student debt crisis.In July 2021, the Biden administration announced that Latreille would serve as the U.S. Department of Education’s student loan ombudsman, its top watchdog for the federal student loan program. In October 2021, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that Frotman would return to the agency to serve as acting General Counsel. Mike Pierce became executive director following Frotman's return.
Advocacy efforts
Income driven repayment
The Student Borrower Protection Center worked with the Student Debt Crisis Center, the Center for Responsible Lending, and the National Consumer Law Center to advocate for improvements to the income driven repayment plan system. The suggested improvements include retroactively counting time spent in the plan towards forgiveness, for relief to be granted automatically, and for the program to apply to all federal student loans. On April 19, 2022, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona announced a new initiative modeled on this proposal, promising “ore than 3.6 million borrowers will also receive at least three years of additional credit toward IDR forgiveness.”Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program
In 2018, the group joined the American Federation of Teachers to launch an investigation into the failure of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Over the course of three years, Student Borrower Protection Center supported litigation by teachers and uncovered evidence of government mismanagement and industry abuses across the student loan system, including evidence that Public Service Loan Forgiveness systematically failed to deliver debt relief to members of the military, as reported by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes. In October 2021, the Biden administration announced an overhaul of the embattled program, promising immediate debt cancellation to tens of thousands of public service workers and additional credit towards loan forgiveness for over half a million borrowers.In 2022, the group released data regarding the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program stating that 9 million public servants are eligible for the loan forgiveness program, however, only 15% have filed paperwork related to the relief program and only 2% have received said relief. The group has also partnered with a coalition of labor unions representing public sector employees to raise awareness and enrollment in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.