The U.S. Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau headquarters in Washington, Feb. 2, 2025.
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Federal student loan borrowers submitted a document variety of complaints to the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau from mid-2024 to mid-2025, a latest report from the bureau exhibits.
However the authorities’s 21-page report, revealed in early January, omits particulars on the character of debtors’ complaints — together with the problems they face, the mortgage servicers concerned and the attainable treatments out there — that appeared in a 36-page draft of the report obtained by CNBC.
“I used to be disenchanted that the report was not revealed in its entirety,” stated Julia Barnard, a former scholar mortgage ombudsman who resigned from the CFPB in October. Barnard, who authored the draft of the report, informed CNBC that CFPB management’s choice to omit her findings is the rationale she parted with the bureau.
“As a result of experiences like this one are being censored, non-public events and the Division of Training have fewer alternatives to appropriate their failures,” Barnard stated. Making much less data out there to the general public limits the company’s accountability, she stated.
The CFPB didn’t reply to requests for remark from CNBC. In comments to Politico in January, an company spokesperson described Barnard as a “disgruntled” former worker and stated the draft “didn’t tackle any of the statutory necessities for the report.”
Barnard disputed that account.
“I did precisely what the statute requires, which is to current a compilation and examination of grievance tendencies, coverage suggestions and a mirrored image on the actions and effectiveness of the workplace within the prior yr,” she stated.
Greater than 42 million People maintain scholar loans, and the excellent debt exceeds $1.6 trillion, in response to the Congressional Analysis Service. Scholar mortgage debtors are dealing with a barrage of adjustments to the federal lending system and issue accessing aid packages below the Trump administration.
Congress established the CFPB in 2010 and tasked the watchdog company with defending customers from abuses within the monetary market. The Trump administration has rolled back CFPB enforcement activity and sought to cut back the company’s staff and funding, though lots of these actions have been challenged in courtroom.
“The choice to quash the items of this report most important of the Trump Training Division and the scholar mortgage trade tells a grim story, as thousands and thousands of debtors default on their loans and the Trump administration shreds the scholar mortgage security web,” stated Mike Pierce, a former senior advisor to the scholar mortgage ombudsman on the CFPB and the manager director of Defend Debtors, an advocacy group. Pierce has seen each the revealed report and the draft.
‘Necessary to get specifics on complaints’
Nadine Chabrier, a senior coverage and litigation counsel on the nonprofit Heart for Accountable Lending, a nonprofit that advocates for truthful lending practices, stated it was noticeable how a lot much less strong the bureau’s newest revealed report was than prior editions. For instance, a report issued throughout President Donald Trump’s first time period, in October 2020, was a 66-page file and included in depth particulars on the character of debtors’ complaints.
“It is essential to get specifics on complaints to determine patterns, perceive the implications and develop options,” Chabrier stated.
The curtailed report on the state of scholar loans comes as extra debtors are falling behind. Round 9 million individuals are at the moment in default on their schooling debt, in response to an estimate by Protect Borrowers.
Below the Trump administration, a whole bunch of hundreds of scholar mortgage debtors have been ready — in some circumstances, for greater than a yr — in a backlog of applications to entry an inexpensive compensation plan or the mortgage forgiveness mandated of their borrowing phrases.
Scholar mortgage complaints are up 36%, CFPB says
The CFPB’s revealed report signifies it acquired around 18,400 federal student loan complaints for the yr ending June 30, 2025, a 36% uptick from the earlier yr. “That is the best variety of federal scholar mortgage complaints acquired in a one-year interval,” in response to the revealed doc.
Nevertheless, the revealed authorities report doesn’t embrace a breakdown of the particular complaints lodged by federal scholar mortgage debtors, which Barnard stated she had compiled and which seems within the draft report. She primarily based her evaluation on a pattern of 5,017 complaints from federal scholar mortgage debtors.
Compensation points had been the highest grievance amongst federal debtors, accounting for twenty-four% of the reviewed submissions, Barnard discovered. She discovered that 15% of the issues cited concerned credit score reporting points, and seven% centered on the Public Service Mortgage Forgiveness program.
In response to a latest courtroom submitting, greater than 800,000 debtors are awaiting a decision on their applications to access an affordable repayment plan. Tens of millions of individuals have been below strain to modify out of the Biden administration’s Saving on A Invaluable Training, or SAVE, plan after this system was blocked by Republican-led authorized challenges.
The courtroom submitting exhibits that functions from an extra 83,370 debtors for the Public Service Mortgage Forgiveness Buyback program, which lets debtors pursuing PSLF retroactively pay for months missed because of forbearance or deferment, additionally haven’t been resolved.
“Debtors are actually having bother making funds,” Barnard stated, talking in regards to the complaints coming into the CFPB.
“These issues are enormously consequential,” she stated.
The CFPB’s revealed report additionally doesn’t embrace a breakdown of the scholar mortgage servicing corporations cited in federal debtors’ complaints, a element the draft contained.
The revealed report “glosses over servicing points,” stated increased schooling skilled Mark Kantrowitz.
It additionally leaves out suggestions for scholar mortgage cancellation and data that specialists say may have helped debtors in default get present.
