Student Loan

A data security breach at a nonprofit student loan company compromised the personal information of 76,939 Maryland residents, according to the identity theft unit of the state attorney general's office. A form of "portable media" was stolen in March from Minnesota-based Education Credit Management Corp. containing data including names, addresses and Social Security numbers for about 3.3 million people nationwide. Under Maryland law, businesses that keep your personal information are required to notify you if that information has been compromised.

Remember when President Barack Obama stuck a federal takeover of the student loan program into the "Affordable Care Act," AKA "Obamacare"? The dirty deed was accompanied by a promise that federal control would save taxpayer money and cut off all the private sector profiteers anxious to put the screws to student loan applicants. Now comes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with a daunting report on the grand experiment: A startling 35 percent of student loan-borrowers under 30 years of age were 90 days or more late in their payments as of December 31, up from 26 percent in 2008 and 21 percent in 2004.

I usually agree wholeheartedly with Eileen Ambrose, but this time she has gone too far in advocating for the hijacking of the student loan program by the federal government ("Student loan industry's 'takeover' by federal government is overdue," March 21). And attaching this proposal, with its wide-ranging effects on our banking and student loan system, to the proposal to remake the health care system by the feds is tantamount to slipping a "mickey finn" to the citizenry, who will wake up with thousands, no, likely tens of thousands of new government jobs with their wonderfully high-cost pension and health schemes, of which private employees can only dream.

The United States is in a debt crisis across the board. The leadership in Washington refuses to do what we elected them to do which is make the hard and intelligent decisions for the population. That requires actually leading from the front and not behind. Instead, the politicians take polls and point fingers. The housing industry that has driven the economy for 50 years is still mired in foreclosed homes and homeowners who are underwater with no way out. Student debt keeps rising due to ever higher college and university costs.

A Baltimore County woman had about $340,000 in student loan debt discharged by a federal bankruptcy judge this month because Asperger's syndrome prevents her from holding a job. Carol Todd of Nottingham pursued college degrees "as a stepping stone toward a measure of liberation … and perhaps to help her achieve something closer to a normal life," according to the May 17 opinion of Judge Robert A. Gordon, a bankruptcy judge for the District of...

T he federal student loan program has gone through many changes in its 45-year history, and now it's time for the next big step: cutting out the middleman. That's what the Obama administration proposes to do starting in July. Students now get federal loans through a private lender or directly from the government. Obama wants all federal loans to come straight from Uncle Sam, which would create a net savings of $62 billion through 2020, according to figures last week from the Congressional Budget Office.

About 320,000 student borrowed who started to repay their loans in 2009 were in default by the end of 2010, according to the latest figures from the Department of Education. The department said that 8.8 percent of borrowers who started repaying loans in 2009 were in default by the end of last year. In comparison, 7 percent of students who started repaying in 2008 were in default by the end of 2009. Debbie Cochrane, program director at the Institute for College Access and Success, says the problem is more severe than these figures suggest.

The federal college student loan program is in need of reform, say 258 of 299 callers to SUNDIAL (86 percent). Forty-one callers (13 percent) think not.A congressional proposal to have colleges lend the money and have the Internal Revenue Service collect the payments goes too far, say 144 of 293 callers (49 percent), while 149 callers (50 percent) say it does not go too far.

WASHINGTON -- The nation's most notorious student loan maker, the Bank of Horton in rural northeast Kansas, failed yesterday and was closed, but not before its bad loans cost taxpayers $250 million.In the late 1980s, the bank in Horton, population 2,177, was the country's second-largest originator of government-guaranteed student loans. Many of those loans were funneled to questionable trade schools and fly-by-night academies, forcing taxpayers to swallow huge losses when students didn't repay the money.

College students from across the country are back in school. Many of them cannot afford the sky-high cost of college without loans. As a result, countless students are going to spend decades after they graduate paying off enormous debts to student loan companies. Just as the right degree presents a student with new opportunities, the wrong loan harmfully restricts where their education can take them. With the stakes so high, we need to make sure every student can easily choose the loan that is right for him or her, and is protected by his or her school and the government from unfair lending deals.

It was fairly obvious by about 10:15 p.m. Tuesday that most cable and network analysts thought President Obama was going to be re-elected. But they didn't have the data to make the call until 11:17. When that happened at NBC News and CNN, viewers were offered as clear a snapshot as I have seen of the difference between a news gathering operation like CNN and an ideologically driven enterprise like MSNBC. "We've got a really major projection to make right now," CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer said.

Thousands of consumers have complained to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about loan servicing and loan modification problems. Gripes include mistakes by servicers in applying payments, trouble fixing errors, an overabundance of paper work and the inability to find anyone at the servicer to help. Another mortgage mess story? No, this is about private student loans - although the regulator notes that both industries share similar problems. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its annual report on private loans.

After Regina Friend's son Roswell committed suicide last year, she was at least relieved to know that the loans he took out to pay for his Temple University degree were forgiven. But now, the Cockeysville woman has learned she faces a hefty tax bill on those canceled loans. "I thought I was done," she said. Then in June she spoke to her tax preparer, who told her that she will owe an estimated $14,000 to the Internal Revenue Service and the state comptroller on the loans she took out for her son. "I don't think there will ever be closure for what happened.

Borrowers overwhelmed by private student loan debt often discover an ugly truth too late — these loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy like other types of consumer loans. A new report on private student loans by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Department of Education suggests it may be time to change that. The agencies say these loans offer so little flexibility to struggling borrowers that Congress might consider revising the bankruptcy law given today's tough economy.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education issued a report on the status of private student loans. Americans owe more than $150 billion on such loans - much less than on federal loans - but these private loans don't have borrower-friendly repayment plans and they're poorly understood by those who take them out. When you hear graduates complain about the weight of student loans, it's the private kind they're typically talking...

A funny thing happened in Washington last week: Congress approved several significant pieces of legislation on bipartisan votes and hardly anybody seemed to notice - or care (which might just explain how so much work got done). Certainly, it's not that the actions were unimportant or lacked controversy. On Friday, Congress approved a package of bills to authorize the federal transportation program for another two years, maintain the interest rate on Stafford loans for college students at 3.4 percent and to extend for five years the National Flood Insurance Program, which subsidizes insurance for millions of Americans who live in flood-prone neighborhoods.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee has approved a modified version of President Clinton's proposal to put the federal government in the business of lending money directly to college students.The plan, which is now almost certain to be enacted in some form, is intended to cut costs both to students and to the government, which now acts as a guarantor of student loans made by private financial institutions.The most immediate saving would be to students, who now pay fees of as much as $80 for every $1,000 borrowed.

Recently, lawmakers and the media have focused on potentially improper relationships between student financial aid administrators and certain lenders, even going so far as to propose eliminating the position in college student aid offices. These proposed measures could have harmful, unintended consequences for students and parents attempting to finance higher learning. Without an objective third party, consumers would be more prone to manipulation by direct-to-consumer marketing by unscrupulous lenders.

When borrowers complain about student loan debt it is most likely they are talking about private education loans. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been getting an earful of complaints about these types of loans that don't have the consumer-friendly repayment plans that federal loans do. The CFPB, which has oversight over private student loans, has been collecting comments from borrowers for months for a report to Congress next...

A Baltimore County woman had about $340,000 in student loan debt discharged by a federal bankruptcy judge this month because Asperger's syndrome prevents her from holding a job. Carol Todd of Nottingham pursued college degrees "as a stepping stone toward a measure of liberation … and perhaps to help her achieve something closer to a normal life," according to the May 17 opinion of Judge Robert A. Gordon, a bankruptcy judge for the District of...