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Education Department will use ‘secret shoppers’ to detect student loan servicer errors

CNN —

The Department of Education announced it will use “secret shoppers” to help monitor the student loan repayment process, as payments for millions of borrowers restarted last month following a pause during the Covid-19 pandemic that lasted more than three years.

Nobody ,

The entire system is a disaster. The vampires cannabalized each other during the pause. Collection infrastructure is a disaster, and it’s going to destroy the credit of at least two generations.

Probably by design. Just assume maliciousness these days when it benefits the rich.

Salamendacious OP ,
@Salamendacious@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t understand what you mean by “vampires cannibalized each other.”

FuglyDuck ,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

loan servicers were consolidated, during the pause when they weren’t getting revenue back. The big ones bought up the little ones.

keep in mind, the federal government wasn’t actually loaning the cash out- they just garunteed it. Kind of like getting a parent to cosign on a car loan.

Salamendacious OP ,
@Salamendacious@lemmy.world avatar

Gotcha thanks for that

Vorticity ,

If errors are so frequent that secret shoppers can find them there are systemic problems that need to be addressed. This isn’t a grocery store.

Salamendacious OP ,
@Salamendacious@lemmy.world avatar

I think the point of the program is for the DOE to actively look for problems instead of having to wait for people to report their problems to them. Isn’t this them trying to address those problems?

alabasterhotdog ,

You’re answering in good faith, which is less common here than even on reddit, you’ll likely only get replies regurgitating cynical takes and memes unfortunately.

Salamendacious OP ,
@Salamendacious@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve noticed lemmy tends to skew more extreme than reddit did. But I’ll just keep on doing me and they can keep on doing them.

Vorticity ,

Yeah, my comment was more cynical than it probably needed to be. I guess my point was more that I hope they thought this through but it seems like encountering problems through random chance seems unlikely to find most of the problems being encountered. Secret shoppers will make up a fraction of a percent of all transactions so it seems unlikely that they will make a significant impact unless the problems are very pervasive.

Salamendacious OP ,
@Salamendacious@lemmy.world avatar

I agree that I hope they’ve thought this through and we’re all not reading an article five years from now about how the DOE wasted a bunch of time and resources doing “secret shopping” and it didn’t result in anything.

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

this headline is a dystopian nightmare. its revolting we have to have loans to be students.

Salamendacious OP ,
@Salamendacious@lemmy.world avatar

Student loans are a royal crapfest from beginning to end.

girlfreddy ,
@girlfreddy@lemmy.ca avatar

Not much has changed since I had a student loan in 1989 for one year of college. When I graduated in '90 my interest rate was 12% and by the time I could pay it off it was 2.5 x what I’d borrowed.

edit – btw this was in Canada.

Salamendacious OP ,
@Salamendacious@lemmy.world avatar

I know nothing about the Canadian system but for the American system we really need to, at the very least, work on bringing the cost of college down and limiting interest rates. 12% is crazy! The us national mortgage rate for a 30 year loan was 10% that year so who knows maybe it was the going rate in Canada. Ugh. Education should not be financially crushing.

girlfreddy ,
@girlfreddy@lemmy.ca avatar

Canada’s post-secondary education is cheaper for citizens, but the powers-that-be have decided to bring in thousands of foreign students - who pay through the nose - to help fund educational institutions who’ve been starved of gov’t funding for decades. And the rules for student loans have become more stringent than ever, leaving many unable to access them.

It’s just a never-ending cycle of bullshit that helps no one except the rich.

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