SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The federal government has, in recent years, paid debt collectors close to $1 billion annually to help distressed borrowers climb out of default and scrounge up regular monthly payments. New government figures suggest much of that money may have been wasted.
Nearly half of defaulted student-loan borrowers who worked with debt collectors to return to good standing on their loans defaulted again within three years, according to an analysis by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For their work, debt collectors receive up to $1,710 in payment from the U.S. Department of Education each time a borrower makes good on soured debt through a process known as rehabilitation. They keep those funds even if borrowers subsequently default again, contracts show. The department has earmarked more than $4.2 billion for payments to its debt collectors since the start of the 2013 fiscal year, federal spending data show.
[...] Officials at the CFPB say the government should reexamine whether the loan program, and the lucrative contracts it bestows on private firms, is working for the millions of Americans struggling to repay their taxpayer-backed student debt.
"When student loan companies know that nearly half of their highest-risk customers will quickly fail, it's time to fix the broken system that makes this possible," said Seth Frotman, the consumer bureau's top student-loan official.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:33AM
Lovely how you ignore the multiple successful countries where this does work. For some reason you just think taxing the rich at a much higher rate is on par with treason.
K12 is actually quite successful, the level of education for the average teen is way higher today. The worst change was No Child Left Behind, and there are many problems, but overall the US population is quite highly educated. The US college system really went downhill when Reagan defunded much of the system and for-profit corporations got their hands in the pie. Its like you look at the world through a distorted mirror that filters reality through the lens of radio talk shows and Fox news bullshit. Occasionally your hateful cynical viewpoint of reality hits the mark, but that is just simple statistics at work. Propaganda has to have some basis in reality or it quickly falls apart.