Advocates Call on Consumer Bureau to Protect Student Borrowers from Predatory For-Profit Colleges
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Advocates with the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) are calling on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to take action to protect student borrowers from the predators lurking at some for-profit colleges.
Here’s more from a blog post at SBPC:
For decades, the for-profit college industry has systematically preyed on and taken advantage of student loan borrowers. A seemingly endless line of lawsuits and narratives of ruined financial lives point to an industry too often premised on outright fraud, pushing loans designed to fail, and peddling worthless degrees — but which regularly generates windfall profits for private investors on Wall Street. These companies target historically marginalized communities and people of color, loading students with massive debt burdens that the schools often know could not possibly ever be repaid. And until January 2021, these schools had zealous defenders at the highest levels of the American government.
A Call to Action
An issue brief published today by the Student Borrower Protection Center and the Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice at the UC Berkeley School of Law makes clear that the CFPB, America’s top consumer watchdog, already has the power to hold for-profit colleges accountable for many of their worst practices and to protect borrowers from abuse.
The Time for Change is Now:
For too long, the for-profit college sector has turned borrowers’ suffering into a multi-billion-dollar industry, leaving individuals’ financial lives shattered and entire communities scarred. Now, with these institutions jumping to capitalize on the COVID-19 crisis, the need for the CFPB to end this cycle of abuse has never been more urgent. The CFPB has the tools to rein in the for-profit college industry on behalf of the millions of borrowers who have been — and who, in the absence of action, certainly will be — harmed by for-profit colleges. It’s time for the Bureau to use them.
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