DEBT/EDUCATION: “The Trump administration is reaching out to the country’s biggest finance and tech companies for help in managing the government’s $1.3 trillion student-loan program.
The meetings are part of an overhaul of one of the nation’s biggest consumer-loan portfolios, undertaken by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and A. Wayne Johnson, the Education Department’s chief operating officer of federal student aid.
The program, which is the main source of financing for American college and graduate students, has suffered from years of customer-service complaints, shaky accounting, rising costs and a high level of borrower defaults.
The government’s current contracts with student-loan servicers, the contractors that deal directly with borrowers on the government’s behalf, expire in 2019. Mr. Johnson said he’s not satisfied with the current service and wants to look beyond traditional higher-education-related companies to administer the program…
Representatives for those companies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Education Department is aiming to formally request bids early next year and complete contracts in the spring, he said.”
-Josh Mitchell, “Trump Administration Looks Beyond Traditional Servicers for Student-Lending Help,” The Wall Street Journal online, Nov. 29, 2017 12:01am