Challenging student loan wage garnishment

This has suggestions.

For the first time since the onset of COVID-19, the Trump administration is set to garnish U.S. workers’ wages for defaulted student loans. The Department of Education has announced that beginning this week it will send at least 1,000 borrowers a notice of intent to garnish wages, sending additional notices every month as it expands its efforts to forcibly collect money from millions of borrowers in default…

But debtors shouldn’t feel hopeless. The truth is, there are a host of options at debtors’ disposal that the Department of Education does not tell borrowers about. Many borrowers who receive default notices will actually be eligible for debt cancellation, whether they know it or not.

Cancellation programs like Total and Permanent Disability, False Certification, and Borrower Defense can provide relief for millions of borrowers who deserve it because their university cheated them or closed down while they were enrolled. Another little-known option that borrowers have is to apply for a hardship exemption if wage garnishment causes them financial hardship. While temporary, and certainly not a solution to the student debt crisis, debtors can apply to pause or reduce forced collections if they are in difficult circumstances. - Truthout

Collection agencies are gouging student debtors

This is atrocious, and not widely known. I hadn't really been aware of the details, myself.

To the surprise of many students and parents, public colleges in every state in the country except Louisiana use for-profit debt collection agencies to retrieve overdue tuition, library fees and even parking fines. (Louisiana, like several other states, sends students’ debts to the attorney general’s office, which can charge fees as high as 33 percent of the original bill.) Many universities add late fees to students’ bills, and when debt collectors add another 30 or 40 percent, students can end up owing thousands of dollars more than they did originally.

As tuition has risen astronomically, one child care or medical crisis can push students over the edge and force them to choose between household bills and tuition payments. The extra fees and interest can make it impossible for them to get back on track, ruining their credit and imperiling their financial futures.

Public colleges have sent hundreds of thousands of students around the country to private debt collection agencies, and the spiraling debt held there now totals more than half a billion dollars, a Hechinger Report investigation has found through more than 60 inquiries with agencies in every state and more than 120 inquiries with individual institutions. For many students, the financial burden makes it impossible for them to return to college and earn degrees that could get them good jobs. State officials often bemoan a lack of college-educated workers for their economies, yet very few states track this problem. Most states cannot provide figures on how often their colleges use these companies, how many students are affected or how much in additional fees and interest is being charged. - The Hechinger Report

Further victimizing defrauded student borrowers

Basically, a sick, demented, vicious person who is not Trump - though this move undoubtedly has his explicit approval - is abusing her power, again.

Critics condemned Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Friday for replacing Obama-era federal loan forgiveness regulations for student borrowers who claim that they were defrauded by their schools with new policies that could make it more difficult to access relief.

"On the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Betsy DeVos is gleefully forcing hundreds of thousands of students defrauded by for-profit colleges to suffer yet another indignity," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement. "Shame on her."

...Since DeVos was narrowly confirmed by the Senate to lead the Education Department in early 2017, she has "refused to follow existing law and cancel the loans for these students, leaving them in debt they can't get away from," Eileen Connor, legal director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, told the Times. "Now, she's shredding a set of fair, common-sense rules that level the playing field between students and those who take advantage of them." - Common Dreams