Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

OFFICE OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION

AFFORDABILITY AND STUDENT LOANS COMMITTEE

NEGOTIATED RULEMAKING SESSION 1, DAY 4, AFTERNOON

OCTOBER 7, 2021

On the 7th day of October, 2021, the

following meeting was held virtually from 1:00 p.m. to

4:00 p.m., before Jamie Young, Shorthand Reporter in the

state of New Jersey. 
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P R O C E E D I N G S 

 MS. ROBERTS: Good afternoon, everyone, and 

welcome back. I hope you enjoyed your lunch break period. We're 

gonna jump right back into the topic of conversation we were on 

at the conclusion of the morning session, which is PSLF

Subarticle 5.

But before I turn over to Jen, just to 

briefly reintroduce the topic and solicit questions and 

comments, I just want to briefly announce that Will is here 

subbing on behalf of FFEL agencies and we have John representing 

individuals with disabilities or advocacy services representing 

them.

So, with that, Jennifer, do you want to 

briefly reintroduce PSLF Article 5.

MS. HONG: Sure. We -- we already jumped 

into the discussion, but this – put simply, we're clarifying 

the definition of full-time employment). And Aaron had some 

regulatory text that he's going -- there we are. That is the 

pertinent section that we are already discussing.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you. And so, we'll pick 

back up, right, with the folks who have their hands raised 

when we went off the camera. So, Suzanne, the floor is yours 

for three minutes.

MS. MARTINDALE: Good. Thank you. So, I'm 

actually putting on my lecturer hat because I have personal 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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experience being an adjunct here. So, yeah, I - I concur with 

- with Jeri that, you know, 2.5 is not going to be enough. I 

understand that the department is going to want a basis for 

whatever number you pick.

So, you know, my question would be maybe of 

the advisors, is there research on average hours worked? You 

know, they put a prevalence of adjunct instruction, I would 

think there might be some -- some data out there that we 

could look to come up with a better number about, you know, 

how much work goes into teaching a credit hour. So, that 

would just be a suggestion there.

And then also in terms of how to certify, I 

have also heard, you know, from my UCAFT colleagues that it 

can be very difficult to get these things certified. And I do 

wonder if maybe, you know, since course information is 

published, is there a way that an instructor could, you know, 

provide copies of their -- their course offering to 

demonstrate that they were teaching, just a though on - for 

how to -- how to self-certify employment generally.

And then my last point, which is just a 

small wording thing, would be that I do think that -- I think

there are variations depending on institutions about the 

kinds of terminology used. So, once suggestion would be to 

use contingent or non-tenured faculty and I can put that in 

the chat just to -- to -- just to record it. Thank you.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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MR. ROBERTS: Great. Most appreciated. And 

then, Marjorie, you were next. You're still -- no, you're 

good. Okay. Thank you. And then we'll have Heather.

MS. PERFETTI: Thank you. So, I would just 

want to reiterate some of Jeri and Suzanne's points as well 

as the public commenter as it relates to contingent adjunct 

non-tenured, part time, whatever other names faculty at less 

than full time status may be referenced. And I think the 

certification piece is something to think about because many 

of those faculty are also engaged beyond the classroom with 

the -- do say what the institution in other ways some of them 

do engage in committee service. Some of them are providing 

professional advising services to their institutions, and 

often, that is beyond the contractual agreement that they may 

have in terms of providing courses for the institution. So, I 

certainly think that there are some worthy pieces embedded in 

all of the comments that have been made so far, and I just 

wanted to lend to that.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Heather. Bobby, you 

got three minutes, go ahead.

MR. AYALA: I just wanna perhaps add one 

more small piece for consideration for graduate students, 

graduate research assistants, or teaching assistants in STEM

fields, a lot of times they -- as they're pursuing a Masters

or a PhD they'll fall below halftime status as they are 
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conducting research for the institution. And though their 

loans may kick in at that time and if there's space for us to 

perhaps consider our calculation for those individuals.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Bobby. ED, do you feel 

you have enough on this to move to temperature check to TA 

regulatory text?

Yup, I see nodding heads. Okay. So, Aaron, 

can you briefly unshare the document? Thank you. And then if 

everyone could all stand by, show of thumbs agreement, can 

live with strong disagreement. We're just -- we're just 

getting a read of the room right now. (Inaudible). I am 

seeing a number of thumbs down.

And per usual -- so I know that folks have 

had voiced some substantive issues they have with the text 

that's been proposed, but anyone has succinctly add any new 

objections if you have not been adequately raised or that are 

not yet tackled in chat. Dixie, yes?

MS. SAMANIEGO: Yeah. So, I wanted to take 

the moment to ask Rajif you could pull some research into 

the workload of adjunct professors and then also seeing how 

many campuses they have to travel to and if also possible 

travel times between those because that's also part of the 

workload that adjunct professors and guest lecturers take on. 

And so, yes, Suzanne had mentioned it, but I just wanted to 

reiterate that and also add in just publicly see if Raj could 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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pull that information for us. I don't feel comfortable 

without having that section and having that data and research 

about the workload that adjunct professors and guest 

lecturers take on.

MR. ROBERTS: Sure. Thank you. Raj, do you 

have that -- that data prepared? I'm not seeing him in the 

room right now. So, we might just need to table that and ask 

data request. We will return to that once -- once we have 

him.

Jennifer, please.

MS. HONG: I was just gonna say Raj might be 

tied up right now from making preparations for the IDR 

remarks.

MR. ROBERTS: Yeah, I know we're gonna call 

him later for additional presentations, so he might be 

wrapped up in that. But Daniel, final word on this, but then 

we were tabling this. I'll make a note of it. And then once 

we have him back in the room, maybe you can speak to this.

MR. BARKOWITZ: Thank you. Dixie brought up

a point that I had not considered until she raised it. The 

other question is adjunct who were teaching at multiple 

institutions and whose worked in total brings up full time 

and then brings up the issue of full time work as one 

institution versus multiple work that adds up to full time 

that might in fact all qualify.
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So, I just want to echo that as we 

reconsider this we look at the impact of multiple gig jobs or 

multiple jobs that all qualified that could, in fact, not be 

on their own full time, but in total are respected as full 

time.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you. And I see Suzanne 

mentioned that, but if you just want to make an explicit in 

the chat just for the transcript. And then, Dixie, I see your 

hand but I also see Raj did just post in chat. Do you want to 

-- do you want to briefly restate the request to him in case 

he missed it and then, Raj, feel free to come on camera if 

you feel prepared to present on this.

MS. SAMANIEGO: Yeah. So, that's exactly 

what I was gonna do. So, Brady picked up -- you got me. So, I 

was just gonna ask for Raj if he could pull up any research 

and data on the workload adjunct professors and guest 

lecturers take on with the added information about travel 

times between multiple campuses, guest lecturers and adjunct 

professors maybe -- because that's all part of their workload 

and I wasn't comfortable with, you know, having -- with 

moving on without that data and information, especially as 

within the CSU, the Cal State University System, which I 

attend.

We have tons of adjunct professors and 

guest lecturers, most of which are people of color and people
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with tons of student loans -- student loan debt. And so, I 

really want to take into consideration that data and 

information point and even specific because most of my 

professors are adjunct professors. And so, I really want to 

have data and research on their workload.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Dixie. And just as a 

reminder for folks who might be listening in, Professor Raj 

Darolia is an advisor for this committee on behalf of 

Economic and/or Higher Education Policy Analysis and Higher 

Education Data. So, Raj, feel free to unmute and the floor is 

yours.

MR. DAROLIA: Yes. So, actually, for this 

topic, what would I ask is that you give me sometime to go 

and search and get this information. So, I think it's a --

it's a great request and certainly one I'm happy to go seek 

out and find the best information for I don't have it on hand 

right now, but I'll make a note of it and I'll alert the 

mediators if I get it tomorrow. If not, we'll do it in 

advance with the members. 

MR. ROBERTS: Great. I appreciate that. And 

then, Dixie, again, just be very -- put the data request in 

chat just so we can refer back to that. Thank you.

So, picking right back up, I saw a lot of 

thumbs down, but any additional comments or addition that we

want to be sure to discuss or surface prior to moving on to 
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issue paper number nine. Alright. Oh, Michaela, please.

MS. MARTIN: Yeah. On here, it says that so 

full time -- sorry -- for full time, it means working and 

qualifying employing in one or more jobs. Does that -- does 

that not -- I just want to make sure that I am not 

misunderstanding if that made it so that it does allow for 

that kind of compiling or is there a separate concern that 

folks are having around that -- that piece of it?

MR. BARKOWITZ: Since I raised it, I’d 

liketo respond. My issue is, yes, Heather pointed that out 

and I appreciate that in the chat. My particular concern is 

the issue of adjunct faculty and the fact, again, that, to 

Dixie's point, with travel time, et cetera, that, you know, 

there may be additional needs around adjunct faculty and 

considering multiple employers. That's -- that was my point.

MS. O'BRYAN-LOSEE: And for me -- oh, I'm 

sorry.

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible).

MS. O'BRYAN-LOSEE: And for me, it's the 

calculation isn't accurate for getting adjuncts credit for 

PSLF.

MR. ROBERTS: Got it. Thank you, again, 

everyone for that. And Jennifer, I think we are ready with 

that issue -- spoken about to move on to issue paper number

nine.
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MS. HONG: Thank you, Brady. So, this is 

issue number nine. The issue papers if -- Aaron, if you could 

pull up issue paper number nine. We do have some proposed 

regulatory text associated with this issue.

It is with regard to pre-dispute 

arbitration and class action waivers. To summarize, we found 

that institutions may use arbitration clauses in their 

enrolment agreements effectively to discourage students from 

pursuing complaints. This enables institutions to avoid 

financial risk associating with its wrongdoing and shift the 

risk to taxpayers and the federal government though 

subsequent borrowed defense discharges. 

Furthermore, due to these enrollment 

agreements, borrowers cannot have a day in court because 

these waivers prevent their ability to participate in 

lawsuits including class action litigation, further 

insulating institutions from potential financial risk and 

wrongdoing.

Finally, there's just an overall lack of 

transparency surrounding institutions arbitration 

requirements and limits class actions. And our authority to 

prohibit these arbitration clauses and class action waivers 

is in section 454A6 of HEA, which authorizes the secretary to

include in a program participation agreement, quote, 

"provisions that the secretary determines are necessary to 
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protect the interest of the United States and to promote the 

purposes of the Direct Loan Program."

Again, similar history with many of the 

rules we’re negotiating. We added a prohibition on these 

agreements and waivers in 2016. But in 2019, we rescinded 

those provisions. And so, now, we're proposing to prohibit 

direct loan participating institutions from using certain 

contractual provisions regarding to the state resolution 

processes and to require notifications and disclosures by 

institutions regarding their use of arbitration.

So, we're propose -- so, we're propose --

first, we're proposing to restore the prohibitions that were 

in place in 2016, again, to prohibit institutions from 

obtaining through the use of contractual provisions or other 

agreements, a pre-dispute agreement for arbitration to 

resolve complaints brought by a borrower against the 

institution that could possibly form the basis of the 

borrower defense claim. So, that's one prohibition. 

Secondly, we're going to be proposing 

restoring a prohibition for institutions to obtain an 

agreement to waive a borrower's right to initiate or 

participate in a class action lawsuit regarding such claims.

And thirdly, we propose to require 

institutions to notify the department and to disclose to

students the institution's use of arbitration and to provide
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judicial and arbitrary records to the department, which will 

be shared with the public.

And the proposed regulatory text is at 

largely what we used in 2016 when we first prohibited this --

this exercise.

MR. ROBERTS: Alright. We will jump right 

in. First up, we have Josh, who is speaking on behalf of 

legal aid organizations. Josh, the floor is yours. 

MR. ROVENGER: And so, I'll start off by 

saying that the Legal Aid community appreciates the 

restoration of this provision. It is essential to keep the 

court house door open to borrowers. And like Michelle 

(phonetic) on Tuesday, one public comment, said that the 

degree she had was, quote, "not worth the paper printed on." 

And then we think these regulations are step in that 

direction.

With that said, there are three specific 

ways where we don't think these proposed regulations go far 

enough. First is with respect to the requirement to provide 

arbitration and judicial records to the department. What we 

found in practice is that schools dispute what constitutes a 

borrower's defense claim as to trigger that requirement.

And so, rather than defining borrower 

defense with respect to this provision, with respect to the 

borrower defense regulation, we would suggest that the 
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department just more broadly define the borrower defense 

claim as any claim alleging unlawful act or mission by the 

school. That way the department and the public have access to 

when schools are trying to compel arbitration.

Second, I don't think the proposed language 

goes far enough when it comes to enforcement. We'd like to 

see some sort of automatic trigger or automatic language 

requiring enforcement of these provisions if a school 

violates them. What we found with respect to the 2016 regs is 

that schools included languages in their contract that did 

not mirror the regulatory language and instead tied their 

obligation to whatever regulation was in effect at the time. 

And so, we think it's particularly important that these 

regulations compel the department to enforce them.

And then the final area of our -- I think 

that the regulations could potentially go further and where 

we'll be interesting hearing, whether the department has 

explored this, is with respect to other lenders or other 

situations that have become more common place in postsecondary education.

So, for instance, we would be interested in

seeing this proposal extended to private lenders that an 

institution essentially forces a borrower to borrow from or 

to cover things like income shared agreements, which are 

becoming increasingly more utilized.
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So, with those three changes and this could 

be a really strong and meaningful regulation. And as I 

started it, we do appreciate it, the restoration (inaudible).

MR. TOTONCHI: Fifteen seconds.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Josh. Jessica?

MS. BARRY: Sure. Thank you. Proprietary 

institutions respectfully disagree with the department on 

this solution. We want to stress upfront that transparency 

and taking the time to educate the student is clearly 

crucial. We don't want that to be a lost.

And when done correctly, arbitration is 

often more efficient and less adversarial means of dispute 

resolution than time consuming and expensive litigation that 

may result in borrowers waiting years to obtain a fair 

hearing and any relief.

Arbitration may also allow borrowers to get 

greater relief than they would in a consumer class action 

case and federal policy favors arbitration with disclosures 

on admissions webpages in the admission section of the 

catalogue, discussion during the enrollment process and 

published clearly defined steps to file an arbitration claim, 

students, can make informed decisions about enrolling at an 

institution that requires pre-dispute mandatory arbitration 

agreements and class action waivers versus those who do not.

And also even if a borrower signs an 
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agreement for pre-dispute arbitration, the borrower has 

access to the department's borrower defense process. The 

borrower may file it -- a borrower defense application before 

the arbitration begins, during the arbitration, or after the 

arbitration as long as the borrower, otherwise, meets the 

requirements before submitting a BD application.

Borrowers also have access to other 

complaint systems, including FSA feedback complaint system 

and the VA principles of excellence complaints system. They 

are always available to them regardless of the school's use 

of arbitration agreements.

Proprietary institutions’ goals are much 

like the department's goals for the regulations we are 

negotiating. Schools want to offer a more efficient and 

effective process for those students and institutions.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Jessica. I'm just 

gonna read out the folks that are in line right now. We have 

Josh, Justin, Jeri, David and Joe. We'll start with you, 

Josh.

MR. ROVENGER: Thanks. I feel a lot of hands

behind me. So, I'm just gonna focus on this idea that 

arbitrations are more efficient means for students to get 

released. It's more efficient because students don't have 

access to discovery in arbitration and so aren't getting the 

records that the school has that the student needs to pursue 
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their relief. 

It's more efficient because precedent 

doesn't usually matter in arbitration, so students don't have 

to spend the time with their lawyers finding the right case 

in the right jurisdiction to make sure that their claims are 

actually adjudicated under the proper law.

It's more efficient because a student 

generally doesn't have a right to appeal an arbitration 

unlike the court system where there is nearby (phonetic)

upper bodies. There's no such right in arbitration.

It's more efficient because we are dealing 

with an arbitrator who wants repeat business and across 

industries typically favors industry rather than consumers.

The idea -- it's more efficient because 

borrowers don't even know that a pre-dispute arbitration 

clause is included in their contract. One study found that in 

2015 less than 9% of survey -- surveyed consumers understood 

that an arbitration clause was include in their contract and 

what impact that would have on their ability to go to court.

Finally, it's more efficient because the 

students and consumers were not only -- they don't generally

bring arbitrations because it's not friendly to consumers, 

because it's difficult to navigate and because sometimes the

relief is so minimal that the only way to actually get 

relieved is through a class action in court.
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For instance, a 2019 study found that while 

there are 825 million consumer -- arbitration clauses and 

consumer agreements, there are about 7,000 arbitrations per 

year.

So, this idea that it's more efficient to 

go the arbitration right of our students that -- that in any 

way protects students is simply false.

MR. ROBERTS: Justin?

MR. HAUSCHILD: Thank you so much. I just 

want to say that we appreciate the department's proposal here 

to restore this prohibition. But quite simply, we don't think 

that students should be forced to bargain away their day in 

court.

I know there was some discussion of other 

complaint systems that exist. For instance, I think, there 

was specific reference to VA complaints system or the GIBill feedback tool. That is true that that system exists, but 

there's no substitute for the legal process that should be 

available to students.

So, I'll leave it there for now. Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Justin. I'm seeing 

Jennifer's hand as well.

MS. HONG: I just wanted to be sure, Josh

if you -- if you have any proposal language on the first 

three points that you made, you can drop those in the chat

, 
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that would be great.

MR. ROVENGER: Sure. So, we don't have any, 

butI'll prepare some and circulate it later on.

MS. HONG: Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Alright. Jeri, I believe, 

you're up.

MS. O'BRYAN-LOSEE: I'm gonna remember to 

put my hand down this time. Okay. I'm a first generation 

student. I would walk into the admissions office so pleased 

that I could go to college. I would sign away body parts. I 

think I've made that clear.

I would sign stuff I don't even remotely 

understand to be able to attend college. And I think the 

process that was described does not protect me at all as a 

student because I don't know. I don't have the -- and I don't 

have the means to know unless I stumble upon or stumble in to 

a legal aid officer and it sounds like I would be giving away 

more than -- more than I got, and I would just be walking 

away. It's too much paperwork. It's too frustrating. Like 

apparently, I must be the idiot because I didn't understand 

what it meant to be an arbitrator if all of a sudden my 

school closed. I just think this has -- I'm so happy this is 

going back in because I think that anything less than that is 

just a detriment to students.

You know, we talked yesterday about 
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webpages that may not be updated. We talked about, you know, 

all these means that students don't pay attention to the 

paperwork they get. But we can't have it both ways. And I 

just think that -- that without this clause, it's a pure 

detriment to any first generation student, anyone who -- who 

doesn't have somebody guiding them through a process.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Jeri. David, you're 

recognized.

MR. BARKOWITZ: Yeah. SHEEO strongly 

supports this proposal. Our members are in the position of 

trying to advance the public interest and the public good and 

students success and this is critical to it.

I -- personally, I see the, or one of the, 

primary roles for agencies like the U.S. Department of Ed and 

the regulatory powers as being to address existing 

inequalities within the systems that they regulate to correct 

for structural problems and to address bad actors. We don't 

make policy on the best case scenario. The best case scenario 

is great. We make policy to address where problems exist, 

where structural things keep back certain groups of people 

and students.

I really appreciated Jeri's comments. I was

in a similar position where -- and so many, probably the

majority of underrepresented students, students of color, 

minoritized students, and many others are in the same 
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position where they have no idea what arbitration is. They 

didn't read it. They're just damn happy to be there. And yet, 

in so many cases, they get screwed. And then to not have a 

legitimate path for recourse just compounds that. It 

perpetuates the inequalities.

And that's exactly what we're supposed to 

be preventing, making policy on the best case scenario, 

perpetuates inequality. We can't do that here.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, David. Brian, I see 

you popped up. Did you have a response to a previous comment?

MR. SIEGEL: No.

MR. ROBERTS: Oh, okay. Sorry about that. 

Then we move on to Joe.

MR. SANDERS: Hi. Thanks for recognizing me. 

First off, I want to say that we support bringing back, this 

ban on pre-dispute arbitration clauses. As somebody who helps 

to run one of the complaint systems that Jessica mentioned, I 

can say that although we do our best to mediate consumer 

complaints we receive against proprietary schools, we are not 

a substitute for the legal process that we believe students

are due.. 

I can also say that the volume of 

complaints that I receive against for-profit schools are far 

more than my office has the resources to prosecute. And we 

are helped when students can't help themselves, when students
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can enforce their own legal claims, it brings accountability 

to the sector, and helps to promote a fair marketplaces which 

is in line with the goals of state attorneys general.

I want to address the specific question 

that Josh raised and that's on the issue of enforcement. And 

I think -- and this may be slightly off -- off base, but I 

think what Josh is saying is that there could arise

situations where the school doesn't quit the provisions or 

amend their agreements as they're required to do here.

And I've spoken with private counsel 

regarding the 2016 provisions. And one of the problems that 

came up was the ability for the student to bring an action 

without that action being dismissed by the court where the 

amendment hadn't been made. And in particular it erodes I 

believe -- and Brian may be able to illuminate this a little 

more -- but I believe that these are included as part of this 

school’s program participation agreement. And to the extent 

that the school is either no longer participating in Title IV 

or -- the example I'm thinking of is a school that has 

announced that it's going to close and students bring claims 

against that school.

Is there a way -- to structure this I 

don't know if there is -- where the students would be able to

not have the (inaudible) department enforce that provision, 

right? So the department doesn't have to say, no school, you 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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can comply with your program participation agreement that the 

borrower can go to the court in a very clear and efficient 

manner, say, I have the right to bring this case, you should 

deny the motion to dismiss.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Joe. I appreciate your 

comments. John?

MR. WHITELAW: Thank you. Just very briefly. 

Defendants always want arbitration. I think it's important to 

note the -- you know, the comments of the -- Jessica on 

behalf of the proprietary institutions in that light, nursing 

homes, credit cards. Pushing for arbitration is and has been 

long a goal of defendants.

We know that arbitration is better for 

institutions. It is not better for students. And let’s not be 

mistaken about what's at stake here. This is about a balance 

of power and we fully support the department's decision here 

to revert to the 2016 provision subject to the expansion or 

the caveat made by Josh. Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, John and everyone in 

chat who's agreeing and additional comments. Heather, please.

MS. PERFETTI: Thank you. And this is I 

think more of a question for Jennifer than anything. In some 

of the narrative under solution there are references to 

contacting accrediting agencies and I'd like to hear more, if

you can provide it, on the role of the accreditor and the 
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expectations of the accreditor under the provisions here.

MR. ROBERTS: Any immediate reaction from ED 

on this?

MS. HONG: Just reaffirming those lines of 

communications throughout the whole BD process, I will be in 

touch close (inaudible) school issues and with the state as 

well, or state regulators (inaudible).

MS. PERFETTI: If I could follow up with a 

question. It does indicate that there could be no requirement 

for students to engage in internal dispute processes at the 

institution before contacting the accrediting agency.

So, I'm just trying to get clarification 

around process and expectation for the institution for 

students and the accreditor in the event that the student is 

having an issue that they are trying to move forward in 

various directions.

MS. HONG: So, I mean, I guess the 

expectation is always the same. It's something more than what 

we would expect of the accreditor and that is to conduct its 

quality oversight over the institution to ensure that, you 

know, the student is receiving quality education. It's not 

that the accrediting agency reflects that in its evaluation

of the institution as appropriate.

We want to be there for, you know, to 

ensure that we're enforcing our regulations and that the 
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accreditor is enforcing its standards all for the benefit of 

students and borrowers. I see a hand -- I see (inaudible). 

MR. ROBERTS: Yeah, please. Yeah, Heather?

MS. PERFETTI: So, I think that there's no 

question that we share that mutual interest. I guess I was 

getting at more procedurally. Students come to accreditors 

with either complaints or what we call third party comments 

when an institution is undergoing evaluation.

So, I was trying to get at whether

accreditors can require students to try to process those 

complaints through the internal process available at the 

institution provided they are still current students prior to 

contacting an accrediting agency for resolution or is this 

prohibiting that kind of first attempt at resolution with the 

institution?

MS. HONG: I don't think so. But I -- I 

would think that should the -- should something like this 

come to the accreditors' attention, they would -- it would 

follow through. I mean it is clearly a quality issue. So, I 

think -- I think both are true, both the -- if -- if the 

borrower, if the student is unable to get recourse from the 

institution, I'm assuming that's why they're reaching out to 

the accreditor.

And so, I just wouldn't want to see a 

student be stuck in this loop where, you know, the 
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institution -- they're not getting what they need from the 

institution, the accreditors telling them to go to the 

institution. I think there are steps that we all can make

with oversight entities to just to kind of ensure that, you 

know, our I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed.

So, no, it would depend on the particular 

case and the language itself is not restricted.

MR. ROBERTS: So, Heather, let's get an 

immediate response. I see David's and Jeri's hands are up. 

So, not seeing any signs from you. David, go ahead.

MR. TANDBERG: Yeah. I would say that, you 

know, it could be similar questions with the state agencies, 

right, all of which have their own on complaint process for 

students and processes for hearing, evaluating the claims.

I don't have the data. And so, this is just 

based on anecdote that the majority do ask whether and to 

what extent the student has pursued appropriate internal 

institutional processes for resolution. I think that's 

important, but yet the agency, whether it be the state, the 

department -- the U.S. Department of Ed or the accrediting 

agency. I share the concern about that, just a loop of 

bouncing students from one place to the other without a 

legitimate path to resolution, which could be within all 

three, right?

The state systems are not dependent on a 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

26

resolution or the decision of the U.S. Department of Ed. 

They're processed independent and weighed on the merits of 

the claim. Just -- and so, that would need to continue.

I did not see language -- the language 

within this -- this proposed language something that caused 

me to be concerned that that would be changed. But Heather, 

if you did, I would -- I would definitely want to talk with 

you and make sure that the language is tight both for 

accrediting agencies and state agencies.

I think this is another example. At some 

point, we really do need to improve the communication among 

the three members of the triad -- like how many times have we 

heard that in our careers? Maybe it's actually time to do 

something about it.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, David. And just really 

briefly, Jeri, before I give the floor over to you. I just 

want to recognize that Bethany is back at the table 

representing individuals with disabilities or groups

representing them. Jeri, please.

MS. O'BRYAN-LOSEE: Okay. So, maybe leading 

off from the communication piece. A student in a bad 

situation is not gonna understand what an accreditor is. 

They're not going to have that knowledge. You know, these 

are, you know, folks, especially if they no one helping them. 

These are people who had to raise their hand to ask to go to 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

27

the bathroom two months before they're enrolling.

It's -- they don't have that -- you know, 

there is no way I would have known to go to an accreditor or 

what that even meant. So, I just want to make sure that when 

we talk about communication we talk a -- we talk in a way 

that we're reaching back to the population that we're talking 

about and working with and ways to communicate with those 

populations.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Jeri. So, at this 

point, I'm not seeing any hands up. Jennifer, do you feel 

that the department has enough to move to temperature check 

for tentative agreement on this regulatory text?

MS. HONG: Yes, I think so. I think folks 

said that they were gonna add things to the chat.

MR. ROBERTS: Yeah. And thank you, everyone, 

for doing that. This is really helpful.

So, if we are ready, if I can just see a 

quick show of thumbs. So, Josh -- Josh, Justin, and Jessica, 

I'm seeing your thumbs down. Anything to add other than 

what's been noted. David, please?

MR. TANBERG: I don't mean to jump. Let --

let them go first then I'll -- I'll clean up.

MR. ROVENGER: I think -- sorry -- no. I 

think this is true throughout -- a lot of the discussions 

we've been having. Simply going back to 2016 is just not 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

28

enough to meet the moment right now and it isn't enough to 

fill -- fulfill the commitments of the president and the 

secretary.

And so, until the kind of additional issues 

that we've discussed are resolved, I'm not comfortable 

signing on.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Josh. We'll go to 

Justin, Jessica and then David.

MR. HAUSCHILD: Thanks, Brady. I -- I think 

this is along the lines of what Josh is saying. But if this 

wasn't brought up, I feel like we didn’t hit on the 

definition of borrower defense. We really feel like that 

needs to be addressed here. There are -- there's a court

decision of the 11th Circuit. The Court of Appeals that's 

specifically refers to this as a, quote, "poorly written 

federal -- federal regulation with regard to this 

definition."

So, I mean, I think we need to look back 

and that whole host of other things that have already been 

raised. Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Justin. Jessica, 

anything to add?

MS. BARRY: Yes, sure. Just that I think you

know why I voted it down for the reasons that I stated. We 

are open to making changes to the rules, but we're not open 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

29

to effectively banning use of arbitration for schools.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Jessica. David?

MR. TANDBERG: You know, this temperature 

check votes are really difficult because there's so much 

nuance and going on. I mean I did a sideways because it's 

such a great step in the right direction, but I just want to 

say that we're supportive of the amendments that have been --

or the idea around the amendments that have been offered by 

Josh and Justin and really excited to see those be 

considered. And so, yeah, absolutely there.

One point of clarification and it's 

wonderful we have so many attorneys at the table and they can 

help me with this stuff. Does it affectively re-ban 

arbitration? Is arbitration banned by this or is it an option 

for the students?

MS. HONG: This --

MR. TANDBERG: Go ahead, Jennifer.

MS. HONG: Thank you. I was just gonna 

clarify that point for Jessica because this -- this provision 

is not banning the use of arbitration. It's banning -- it's 

prohibiting requiring students to go through arbitration and 

requiring disclosures if you -- if institutions use 

arbitration.

MS. BARRY: Thank you for making that 

clear. I understood and I think miscommunicated this. So, I 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

30

appreciate it.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, everyone. I 

appreciate that dialogue. So, I guess, Aaron and Jennifer, 

you are ready. We are ready to move on to issue paper number 

10, correct?

MS. HONG: That's right, income-driven 

repayment. Brady, I just wanted to check in with Raj. We have 

asked Raj to prepare some items-- I just want to make sure 

that he's -- he's ready to go. I'll still provide the 

background with you.

MR. DAROLIA: Yes. So, I can certainly 

present the two documents that I sent you this morning, just 

to provide some background on poverty guidelines and how we 

might think of that in IDR plans. My plan will be to present 

more tomorrow with some other -- maybe numerical simulations 

and some more background (inaudible) ready to go now.

MS. MACK: Just for the committee's benefit, 

two documents were just sent to your e-mails that Raj might 

reference during this discussion.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks. Whenever you're ready, 

Raj, you have the floor.

MR. DAROLIA: Okay. Thanks. Let me just pull 

those documents up so that I can show them.

MS. HONG: Actually, if it -- I think it 

might be better if I provide the background on that -- on the 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

31

IDR and then have -- give the mic over to Raj. Brady, I'm 

sorry --

MR. ROBERTS: No, no, no. I mean, yeah, 

that works for me. 

MS. HONG: Does that work? Okay. So, just 

moving into our IDR discussion, some background, as you know, 

borrowers increasingly rely on income-driven repayment plans 

to navigate their student loan repayments. These are plans in 

which the borrower's monthly payment is set based upon their 

income and any remaining balances are forgiven after certain 

number of years.

We have several of these payment plans. Two 

versions of income-based repayment are spelled on statute. 

Others, such as income contingent repayment, such as Pay As 

You Earn and Revised Pay As You Earn stem from authority as 

outlined under Section 455 of HEA. 

Just to clarify, these plans are only 

available on direct loans held by borrowers. We believe the 

IDR is crucial -- is a crucial payment option, but we have 

identified some challenges with these plans that we'd like to 

discuss further with this committee.

The first one which we hope, Raj can shed 

some light on tomorrow in his remarks tomorrow, is that most

IDR plans offer payment equal to 10% to 15% of the borrowers'

discretionary income, which is defined as their income above 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

32

150% of poverty line -- poverty line based upon household 

size.

While this formula results in lower

payments for borrowers, we found that many lower income 

borrowers were still not able to afford these amounts. And 

Raj can speak to the poverty line based upon household size 

today.

Another issue is that while IDR plans 

reduced monthly payments for borrowers who pay less than the 

rate of accumulating interest, they see their balances grow 

and sometimes significantly, and that can be very 

discouraging to borrowers.

Also, existing IDR plans offer forgiveness 

after 20 to 25 years. Again, this may benefit those with 

higher balances but may be too long for those who have low 

loan amounts or have low -- low income for long periods of 

time.

So, we're concerned about lower income 

borrowers and borrowers with lower balances. We want to reach 

those borrowers because we find that they often end up 

delinquent or just -- or default on their loans. These 

suggest that these plans are not doing enough for this 

category of borrowers.

The various IDR plans have differing terms

and differing benefits, depending on your individual 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

33

situation, further complicating how a borrower may choose 

among them.

So, based on all those concerns, the 

department is interested in creating new IDR plan using the 

ICR authority that addresses those challenges I just 

described. We are interested in feedback from the committee 

on those issues and have crafted discussion questions toward

that end. I know Raj has already begun some work by providing 

us with information on poverty guidelines and how they 

intersect with IDR plans. 

And we're gonna advance this discussion 

further tomorrow. And just to help us with the discussion, 

I'll just read the first two questions out loud and then I'll 

hand it over to Raj for discussion.

Okay. Give me one second. Okay. So, 

question number one is, there have been proposals to lower 

the percentage of income that must be paid for undergraduate 

borrowers. Should the department reduce payments to 5% of 

discretionary income? If so, which types of borrowers should 

be eligible for payment set at 5%? Should the % of income 

devoted to student loan payment rise as income increases? And 

then does exempting income up to 150% of the federal poverty 

level based upon family size protect enough income borrowers, 

particularly low and middle income ones? If not, what is the 

appropriate level to protect sufficient income?
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

34

And at this point, I'll hand it over to 

Raj.

MR. DAROLIA: Thanks, Jennifer. Let me go 

ahead and share my screen. So, this first is the poverty 

guidelines 2021 document. You should have received it in your 

email.

So, I thought it would be helpful to first 

just get an understanding of what poverty guidelines are and 

how they're used in some of our federal programs. They're 

currently used in the IDR programs in various ways and it's 

common that eligibility and other federal programs also 

depend on individuals or household's income relative to the 

poverty guidelines.

So, these are from HHS, the U.S. Department 

of Health and Human Services. These are published every year. 

What I'm showing you here today is -- are the poverty 

guidelines for what we call the 40 contiguous states and the 

District of Columbia. So, Alaska and Hawaii are going to have 

their own separate guidelines, but this will give -- an 

illustrative example for most of the -- most of the states in 

the country.

Now, one thing I just wanna make sure 

people know is that poverty guidelines are a little bit 

different than what we call poverty thresholds. I know this 

seems like it's parsing language somewhat. But poverty 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

35

thresholds are what we use and is produced by the census 

bureau typically to say is somebody in what we consider 

poverty baseline income, okay?

The poverty guidelines are distributed by 

HHS and these are used as a benchmark for eligibility, okay? 

So, we're gonna -- sometimes you have to switch a little bit 

between these because if we say something like, what is the 

share of a certain group that is in poverty, that's actually 

relative to the poverty threshold; whereas, if we say 

somebody eligible for a program or in this case there are 

certain amount of income that's protected, we're gonna be 

using the poverty guidelines.

They're slightly different. They're largely 

very close to each other in a lot of cases. But I do want to 

point that out just in case anybody has any confusion about 

that, and again, I'm happy to talk about that in more 

details.

So, how would you think about the poverty 

guidelines? Again, often in federal programs, these are used 

for eligibility for that program, so some pretty popular ones 

are Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program 

or SNAP, and for those,effectively, if the individual or 

household has an income lower than the poverty guideline, 

some of these, it's 100% or 150%, then they would be eligible 

for that program.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

36

So, the Department of Education program 

called TRIO, for those of you who are familiar with that, 

students can typically qualify for that as their income 

levels are less than 150% of the poverty line.

But for IDR, it's a little bit different. 

So, currently, the IDR plans, for example, we calculate 

what's called discretionary income using these poverty 

guidelines. And in this case, for the IDR plans, 150% of the 

-- of -- of the poverty guideline. So, let me give numeric 

example and I will spend a little more time tomorrow. I just 

didn’t have the time today to kind of write this all out on 

the slide, but I'll do this more numerically tomorrow with 

everybody.

Let's say a borrower makes $25,000 a year 

and they are just a single household. So, that would be 150% 

of the poverty guideline for a single household member, it

would be $19,320 (inaudible). Actually, wrong, so I'm really 

gonna get Professor-y for you here.. So, this $19,320 would 

be the relevant poverty guidelines for that borrower. That 

means that effectively that first $19,320 that that 

individual makes would be what would call protected from 

their discretionary income. So, the discretionary income 

would be the income above and beyond that $19,320. So, again,

if somebody made $25,000 a year, we would subtract $19,320 

from $25,000. If I do the math right, it's about $5,600, 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

37

$5,700. And so, that would be the discretionary income of 

which borrowers would pay a portion of in these IDR plans.

Now, one of the proposals might be 

changing, for example, the poverty guideline. So, if it was 

changed to something like 200%, then the poverty guideline 

would be $25,760. In this case, for our borrower who made 

$25,000 a year, again, we'll just -- we would subtract that, 

effectively they wouldn't have discretionary income, right? 

It would actually be a negative number, but effectively they 

wouldn't have discretionary income, okay?

So, I'll go into this again in more detail 

tomorrow and I'll try to provide some numerical examples. But 

all else equal, one of the things to think about with pulling 

any of the levers on some of these things, whether it's 

poverty guidelines or the % of income that is paid out in 

some of these plans is that all else equal , and I know 

there's a lot things -- these things are a lot 

interconnected, if you have a higher income protection, so a 

larger portion of the poverty guideline is covered, then you 

would expect that borrower to have a lower payment on a 

monthly basis and also possibly a larger amount forgiven at 

the end of the term. Again, there's a lot of kind of other 

considerations, but all else that’s what we’d expect.

Now, the trade off often with this is the 

longer number of repayment periods can mean that all else 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

38

equal that debtor can pay more interest over the life of

their loan, right? So, this is -- this is a trade off between 

how much somebody has to pay on a monthly basis versus how 

much they pay overall over the life of the loan.

The other thing which is consideration, 

which I'm not sure is discussed -- is gonna be discussed in 

these sessions is the tax liability on the forgiven balance, 

right? So, on the one hand, forgiving a larger amount of loan 

might be better for the debtor because that's the amount that 

they might not pay, right? But if there's a tax liability on 

that -- by that, I mean if they have to pay taxes in the 

years -- in the year in which this outstanding balance is 

forgiven, then that would be higher all else equal if they 

have a higher balance at that time.

So, I wanted to provide this background, 

you know, leading into our discussion tomorrow about thinking 

about poverty guidelines. I think it's helpful often to think 

about this or -- or to have a figure like this in front of me

so I can kind of think about, you know, just the dollar 

amounts relevant for this. These are updated annually. And 

what I’ve put here is both the annual amounts and then also 

the monthly amounts it’s effectively just the annual amounts 

divided by 12, again, for different household size, in this 

case, one to eight. The schedules actually go out to larger 

household sizes. It can also, you know -- there's also some 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

39

scenarios, you know, 125% or 50% of the poverty guidelines 

and that’s available in the link -- that's in the notes in 

this document, and I can also put that in the chat if it will 

be helpful.

So, that's poverty guidelines. Are there 

any questions about that one? I can't see everybody with my 

shared screen, so.

MR. ROBERTS: There are some folks who added 

thoughts to the chat. I welcome them to voice them or if 

there's any new comments or questions, please feel free to 

chime in.

MR. BARKOWITZ: So, Raj, you mentioned and -

- Persis answered this in part in the chat, you answered 

the liability question, tax liability. I presume that tax

liability for forgiven principal on a student loan not 

necessarily forgiven interest. So, if interest is forgiven, 

it's not been added to principal, is there current tax 

liability for that portion?

MR. DAROLIA: I'm gonna allow one of the

lawyers or legal folks on this to answer that, if they're 

able to.

MS. HONG: So Persis is right. That -- I 

believe it's their 20 -- yeah, 2025 and that was provided

through -- Brian, correct me if I'm wrong, through the 

appropriations act?
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

40

MR. SIEGEL: Yes, through the appropriations 

act passed in December. Discharged amounts are not taxable 

until, I think, it's 2025.

MR. BARKOWITZ: Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: I'm seeing Christina and 

Dixie's hand up. Christina 

MS. CHRISTINA: I -- well, I'm an alternate,

so I don't want to speak without permission. But I did -- I 

did want to explain my comment. I just -- I'm looking at this 

from two ways. So, there's -- there's the flat percentage 

rate that you're applying to all borrowers which has the 

problem of being essentially regressive on lower income 

earners because there's -- as we know in financial aid, 

there's a protected income or there's a presumed amount you 

need, you know, to meet your basic expenses and then have

people with higher income, of course, have more discretionary 

income. So, the impact of a flat percentage rate is less even 

though dollar amount, the -- you know, the low income family 

is paying less, it's still a greater proportion of their --

of their discretionary income because they simply don't have 

it.

So, that's how I'm thinking about that. But

then the fix, of course, that you're providing is to go to a

tiered percentage rate, right, to bring down the percentage 

rate for the lower income and that -- and while I support 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

41

that in theory, I'm -- I'm worried about the cliff it creates 

for those -- and the disincentive to be a higher wage earner 

so that -- so -- for those that would cross over into the 

higher rate. And I don't know if that's been addressed in the 

chart or not. That -- that's my contribution.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Christina Dixie?

MS. SAMANIEGO: Yeah, sure. I'm not sure if 

this is where I should talk about this, or you know, mention 

it, but I was wondering if there would be consideration about 

like poverty levels like regionally because specifically in 

O.C., in Orange County, our poverty is very different. It 

looks very different than what it is federally. And to be 

poor in O.C. is to be like, right -- it's extreme, right? So, 

poverty, in O.C. is not the same as it would be across the 

nation and specifically to my lived experiences, the way as I 

live as a poor person, as a low-income person, it may be very 

different to someone else.

And so, I would wonder if there would be 

special consideration regionally at the very least to what 

poverty levels are because I know that other folks don't --

that are considered low income, I -- my lifestyle and my low 

income looks very different because of the school that I 

attend in Orange County and the fact that I live in Orange, 

County.

MR. DAROLIA: Thanks, Dixie, for that. 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

42

Subsequently, I'm not gonna respond, but the -- that's for 

kind of the committee to discuss, but-- what I can say is 

that in the next document I have, I do talk a little of --

I'll provide a little bit about regional variation into 

poverty as well as some type of programs in which poverty 

guidelines vary by state or -- but in others, it's federal

and I will -- I will mention that.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks. Persis has a question 

and that she's resuming her seat of the table on behalf of 

legal assistance organizations. All yours. 

MS. YU: Thank you. This is somewhat of a 

procedural question. So, I'm curious whether or not we are 

starting to engage in the conversation about what the 

regulations are or are we engaging in conversation on 

questions for Raj. Because if we are talking about questions 

for Raj, I'd love to give Raj the floor; however, if we are 

engaging in conversation about the actual proposals that are 

at the table, I'd like to get the department to respond to 

whether or not this conversation will include the discussed 

that I raised about defaulted loans, though I think that that 

is actually very relevant to Raj's discussion since the 

majority of defaulted loan borrowers are living in poverty as 

well.

MR. ROBERTS: Jennifer, please.

MS. HONG: I agree with you, Persis. It's --
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

43

I think all of those issues are overlapping. And I think from 

the discussion points that you raised on defaulted borrowers, 

I think they are pertinent to some of the discussion here.

So, to answer your first question, yes, we 

are getting into the IDR discussion broadly while we are also 

asking more discreet questions regarding Raj's presentation 

but to the extent that we -- these are all overlapping issues 

to inform the IDR plan that we're putting forth. And you can 

see that this -- this issue paper is written much more open 

ended and we're really -- we really kind of felt like we 

needed more feedback from everyone before we engaged with it.

And certainly, the defaulted borrowers 

issue certainly falls into some of the things we'll be 

discussing under IDR, but there are, you know, other 

proposals that we are putting forth with regard to default

that are not on the table here for this particular 

negotiating rulemaking for some of the issues that you raised 

might be a better fit.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Jennifer. Yes. So, I 

think, Raj, if you wanna -- if anyone has asked a specific 

question to Raj, we can just finish up that, and then if not, 

we can return to the questions that ED has raised. So, with 

that, Persis?

MS. YU: Sorry, not to belabor the point, 

but I think it would be helpful as we're having -- as we're 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

44

asking questions of our experts for us to understand what we 

are asking about. And so, if we're going to be discussing 

issues of default at this negotiation table, I think it would 

be helpful to understand that in advance so that we can 

utilize our experts as best as we are able.

MS. HONG: Point well taken. I mean, I think 

-- I think that discussions relevant to IDR to the extent 

that we can -- we can provide better protections for lower 

income borrowers that we find in default under the current 

plans, what can we propose that's better with them in 

particular?

MS. YU: Well, under the current plans, 

defaulted borrowers are not eligible for income driven

repayment. So, that -- so my question is whether or not we 

are going to add a discrete issue about we're adding 

protections for defaulted borrowers to this negotiation.

MS. HONG: So, we're not adding any issues 

at this time to the extent that -- to the extent that 

discussion is relevant or pertinent to this discussion and

keeping borrowers from defaulting. We are open to hearing 

those ideas.

MS. YU: So then, procedurally, we had 

deferred this conversation about the proposals that I had 

raised on Monday until this conversation. And I would like to

revisit that conversation about whether or not we can add 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

45

topics to the table and I believe that that is something that 

can be subject to a vote.

MR. ROBERTS: So, I'm gonna -- I'm -- just 

deferring to you, Jennifer, how would you like to address 

this if you want Raj to can continue or you want to move to 

return to Persis' outstanding issue versus the issue paper 

that you've introduced?

MS. HONG: Yeah. I'll just -- I'll be 

consistent with what we said from the beginning in the 

outset, which is a lot of the discussion on defaults might be 

taken better outside of this negotiated rulemaking. There are 

some -- obviously, these issues are overlapping. So to the 

extent that it's -- we've been to this discussion on IDR, 

we're happy to talk about it.

At this point, we wouldn't support adding 

any more issues on the table given that we have still a 

couple of more that we need to get through by the end of this 

session. But your point is well taken and I'll defer to Brady 

in terms of process if Persis would like to bring this -- to 

add more issues to the table.

MR. ROBERTS: So, I would just say -- so 

Persis, feel free to jump in, but I will only say that under 

the protocols, these are open for a consensus check to add 

new topics of negotiation to the rulemaking session.

MS. YU: So, I would just like to add -- ask 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

46

that we then do add this topic to the negotiations. You know, 

as I stated in the proposals that were circulated, you know, 

there are currently roughly 9 million borrowers in default 

and they are experiencing a lot right now, unfortunately, 

because of the payment suspension, a lot -- most of them are 

not experiencing involuntary collection but they are subject 

to having their wages taken, they are subject to having their 

Social Security taken. They are subject to having their 

entire tax refunds taken, which includes the earned income 

tax credit and the child tax credit.

And while the department is currently 

working towards restarting payments on February 1st, that is 

the beginning of tax season, which means that when the switch 

gets flipped back on, millions of borrowers are gonna have 

their tax refunds, which include the child tax credit which 

has lifted millions of children out of poverty seized

immediately. And that is a subject that I think that this 

rulemaking committee needs to take up. We need to have 

protections for those borrowers. And I think, you know, it 

can't be deferred for another day. I think they need to have 

protections now. I hear from borrowers all the time telling 

me about how the seizure of their tax refund is threatening 

their -- threatening their ability to go to work, how it's 

threatening their ability to keep housing.

Hundreds of folks have told me about how 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

47

they now live in shelter because they fell behind on their 

rent, they were counting on their tax refunds, and they could 

not pay their landlord back, and so, they were evicted. This 

is an immediate issue that's going to come up for borrowers 

before February 1st. And so, I believe that it needs to be an 

issue at this rulemaking. And I would like to -- I would like 

to get a consensus vote.

MR. ROBERTS: I was going to say, Jennifer, 

unless you have an immediate response, I would ask for a 

consensus check and I see your hand is up. 

MS. HONG: Yeah. Just to add, if -- Persis, 

if you can articulate those proposals again for the post 

(inaudible) committee, really quick, all those conversations, 

everything surrounding debt collection, the department has 

already started that discussion. It's just that those -- our

debt collection practices are authorized also from the HEA. 

It's not on a -- not authorized under Title IV, which is what 

this negotiated rulemaking is about just to put that out 

there but we will be discussing that sometime.

MS. YU: So just for the --

MS. HONG: (Inaudible) under way --

certainly under way.

MS. YU: I appreciate that and any -- and we

certainly welcome any insights into what the department is 

planning for defaulted borrowers to protect them from these 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

48

involuntary seizures that are going to start on February 1st. 

The proposals that I had submitted and sent around were to

first was to create an additional pathway out of default for 

borrowers.

Currently, there are two methods that 

borrowers are able to -- well, there's four where payment in 

full and complete settlement is being two of them, which is 

not available to the vast majority of my clients but rehab --

rehabilitation and consolidation being the other ways that 

borrowers getting out of default, those are very limited. The 

CFB has data that shows that a lot of borrowers default after 

those programs.

And so, therefore, I suggest that we create 

a new pathway. I sent around the statutory language, which I 

thought -- which I believe gives the department the legal 

authority under the Higher Education Act to create a new 

pathway, which would be more flexible, which would get 

borrowers into income-driven repayment faster, and would have 

less restrictions on borrower's ability should they redefault again. So, that was the first proposal.

The second proposal was to have the 

department ends its use of the acceleration clause so that 

borrowers could be placed -- so that borrowers could 

automatically be placed into an income-driven repayment when

they do default so that any involuntary collection that 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

49

occurs through the other -- through the Debt Collection 

Improvement Act, as you alluded to, would be limited to the 

income-driven payment amount, therefore, meaning that any 

borrower who was subject to involuntary collection would not 

be done so punitively but only to the amount that they would 

have been expected to pay under an income-driven repayment 

amount.

MR. ROBERTS: Alright. And David, I see your 

email about this. I'm just gonna -- yeah, please.

MR. TANDBERG: I really appreciate Persis 

putting this together and it's very well done. I think I 

agree with the proposals. And I guess my only question before 

voting to add it to the agenda, which I think I'm inclined to 

do, is if the department is prepared now or later today or 

tomorrow to articulate what it is they are planning to do 

about these issues, so if they're gonna take care of them, 

that's great. But if they're not, then we need to compel it 

through the regulatory process.

Given the deadline, the timeline that we're 

facing and the cliff, I think the more we can do to better 

prepare students and deal with the repercussions of the -- of 

the student debt collection that's about to start the better. 

So, I'm seriously concerned about that issue. Thank you, 

Persis, for pushing this. I would like to hear what the 

department is doing and planning to do. If they're taking 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

50

care of this, great. But if not, then that's another matter.

MR. ROBERTS: Oh, yeah, Brian, please.

MR. SEIGEL: Yeah. I would just note that 

nothing will be final until fall of next year. So, to the 

extent you want to propose ways for the department to ease 

the transition of borrowers back into repayment beginning in 

January of 2022, those need to be addressed more 

appropriately to the department's leadership in a different 

forum.

You know, we're looking -- here, we're 

developing regulations that will, as I said, will be 

published next fall and that will go into effect primarily in 

July of 2023. The changes Persis has suggested, you know, may 

be considered forward in the future. As the department has 

stated, we're not sure that we have time or -- and bandwith

to take it up in this process because we have a big agenda 

now. But I just want to -- if your focus is on what happens 

in January 2022, this isn't the place to those changes are 

gonna be made.

MR. ROBERTS: Yeah, Persis?

MS. YU: So, I appreciate that -- that there 

is a delay in the timeframe in which the rules that we 

negotiate now will take effect. I think that's all the more 

reason in why we should not it now though. There are, 

hopefully, things that the administration can do and will let 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

51

us know that they are doing in the interim to protect 

borrowers from this cliff that we are facing on February 1st. 

However, given the fact that default is always a problem and 

it has been our problem before the COVID crisis, I think 

that's all the more reason why we need to do it as soon as 

possible and this is the rulemaking we have the opportunity 

to write rules that could make meaningful protection for 

millions of borrowers. These are our most vulnerable 

borrowers. And they need to have the protection as soon as 

possible and I think that means doing it during this 

rulemaking.

I think if we don't have time during the 

current schedule, we could also create a working group that 

could meet outside of the scheduled times and could make a 

presentation to the main session as well, which would be a 

way that we could both accommodate all of the issues that we 

have at hand and also work on this vitally important issue so 

that we can get relief for these borrowers as soon as humanly 

possible.

MR. ROBERTS: Brian or Jennifer, any 

additional response from the department?

MS. HONG: I just want to make clear that --

I just don't think that this is the right place for it and I 

just want to affirm the department's commitment to all 

borrowers. If you know, we extended the CARES benefits to --
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

52

expressly to defaulted FFEL borrowers earlier in the year. 

So, we are continuing with that commitment. And all I can say 

is those discussions are well underway at the department. I 

just -- this particular negotiated rulemaking table is not 

the right place for those issues right now.

MR. ROBERTS: Yeah, Dixie?

MS. SAMANIEGO: Jennifer, then I ask a 

question, and Brian too. So then what would be the right time 

to raise these concerns, these, you know, issues that Persis 

raised up? Definitely not after February 1st, right? I would 

hope not. But that's my question, when would be the right 

time then?

MS. MACK: I -- if I may, Brady. I'm seeing 

David reiterate in the chat what he mentioned in his prior 

comment, right, which is giving an opportunity to the 

department to speak to what Persis has raised and proposed

and it has been circulated to all of you.

I'm wondering if we hit a brief pause 

button even on the consensus check here and allow everyone to 

give this a little bit further consideration and perhaps if 

there is any additional response from the department that the 

department can come back with and then we will, in fact, take 

a consensus check.

Are you amenable to -- to that? Everyone 

maybe a -- I'm seeing a couple of thumbs up, a couple of 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

53

nods. So, I'm gonna run with that, folks. Let's hit the pause 

button here. Why don't we take a quick break, come back. If 

there's anything additional we need to hear from Raj, we can 

do that. And then let's move in to some of the questions that 

the department is hoping to get your feedback and insights on 

in that issue paper.

I have 2:18. So, let's come back at 2:28, 

10 minutes, will that work? Okay. We'll see you then. Thank 

you.

(BREAK)

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, everyone. Welcome 

back. We have about an hour remaining before public comment. We 

do have a full public comment period today. So in interest of 

utilizing our next hour wisely, do we want to pick back up with 

offering questions and comments to the -- to some of the 

questions that ED has lined out give issue paper number 10?

 If that's okay with you Jennifer, I'd ask 

Aaron just to briefly reshare it to guide our discussion.

MR. DAROLIA: Brady, did you want me to finish 

up discussing the discussion(inaudible)?

MR. ROBERTS: Raj, I apologize. Yeah, if you 

want to reshare your screen and finish up that second half of 

you presentation.

MR. DAROLIA: I'll go very quick.

MR. ROBERTS: Okay.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

54

MR. DAROLIA: So, the second document I 

provided here are just some other background documents, just to 

get us thinking a little bit more about poverty. Let me just say 

that tomorrow I'll present more about IDR plans specifically 

just some specific numerical simulations and examples.

And certainly, if there are specific things that 

the folks on this committee wants, please me let me know, 

especially as we go into the -- out of this session, you know 

having three weeks to work on things before November will 

certainly give me time to do some analysis. So, please go ahead 

and let me know if there are things that come up with that.

So, one thing I wanted to mention with this 

and I think this came up in a -- in a chat question as well, 

because it's important to note that everything we're presenting 

here today is based on income. The income is the only one to 

measure of how we might think of social wealth welfare.

Nothing I'm presenting here is related to 

other things we might think of such as wealth. There's also been 

a number of research efforts to measure things like material 

insufficiency or other conceptions of poverty.

What I can say is that one of the advantages 

of income is that it's more easily recorded in a lot of federal

data systems or data systems more generally, right. So, there 

are reasons to think that other measures of poverty, wealth, 

material insufficiency are incredibly important, maybe even more 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

55

important than income, when we think about poverty or social 

welfare but there are data challenges in trying to record some 

of this. 

 So, I did want to point that out and I'm 

happy to talk more about that in future discussion. The first

figure I showed here is really to actually -- was something that 

I -- Dixie astutely picked up on in the earlier discussion and 

that is that there is geographic variation in how we might think 

of poverty.

So, this is a map from U.S. Department of 

Education which shows the percentage of children under the age 

of 18, living in poverty based on their household income. And 

so, the darker blues are those that are a higher percentage 

living in poverty than the national average and the lighter 

blues are those at lower percentage.

So, as you can see there’s clearly variation

across the country. What does not show here again, to -- to 

Dixie's credit pointing this out, is there's a clearly a lot of 

within state variation within this as well. This can be based on 

regional factors, labor markets, other things, also there's 

variation through across general geographic categories like 

urban, suburban, rural areas as well.

Now, as I mentioned before, some federal 

programs do have different poverty threshold or sorry, poverty 

guidelines by state. Medicaid is a prominent example of this. 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

56

What I would say with that is that -- in Medicaid for example, 

that's a federal-state partnership program in which the federal 

government and the state government really work together to 

implement that program.

Federal student loans for most of us at least 

thus far have not operated in that fashion. And so, often when 

we see different guidelines by state, that's often where the 

state has a prominent role either administering or dealing with 

that program as well.

The second and third figures here, I just 

wanted to also point out that poverty rates vary by race and 

ethnicity as well. This is a measure or a figure that comes from 

the Census Bureau and this looks overtime, 90% with individuals 

of who identified certain races, ethnicities in this case.

Black, Asian and Hispanic are listed in nonHispanic white, how poverty rates have changed over time. There 

has been some convergence over time but as you can see from this 

graph, there's clearly still some large disparities among the 

ethnic groups.

Figure 3 here is in a similar spirit but 

slightly different group. Again, these are children under age 

18, a figure produced by the Department of Education. A handful 

more, race and ethnicities included in this graph but as you can

see certainly here we still see some disparities in poverty 

rates by race and ethnicity.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

57

Finally, this last figure I have here, this 

is a figure that came from a Pew Research Center report. And so 

there is a differential income distribution at different types 

of schools as well.

So, this is a little bit older data, it’s in 

2016. It's actually the -- still the most current data that we 

can get for this question, specifically and I'll also mention, 

point out here that this is just dependent undergraduates in 

this.

And so, obviously we know independents are 

also critically important in a lot of these discussions as well. 

But for dependent undergraduate, we focused on just 2016. I 

think the highlight here that we could take away is that those 

bottom 2 categories there which are private for-profit 

institutions and public two-year institutions have a larger 

share of students either living below the poverty line or near 

the poverty line certainly relative to the other two categories 

of institutions in your public four years and private nonprofits 

as well.

So, I just wanted to also provide some 

background. I think a lot of folks know this, that the income 

distribution students is not even across institution type. And 

the other thing I'll say with all of that (phonetic), is there's

a clearly a lot of intersectionality across institution type, 

race, ethnicity, gender, where folks live, other things as well.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

58

And so, again, if there are specific requests 

or questions, I'm happy to -- to dig as much as we can on some 

of these data, again in some cases the data is just limited.

So, that's all I have to present today. I saw 

those little questions in the chat that I'll -- I'll respond to 

now. If there's anything for me I'm happy to stay on but 

otherwise I can bow out and can let the committee get back to 

the deliberations.

MR. ROBERTS: Raj, I'm not sure if any of the 

-- the questions in chat are immediately addressable but I do 

see Bethany's hand.

MS. LILLY: I just wanted to say the question 

that I put in the chat out loud because I think one of the 

challenges that we run into when we're talking about poverty 

level is the churn that happens because people's income varies 

over the course of the year.

And so, I don't know if it exists. I know 

churn is a huge problem between Medicaid and the ACA exchange 

plans and I just -- if there was any information on churn and 

like if there's a way to minimize that with different income 

phases, I think that would be helpful. But I also totally 

understand if that's not available because it's -- yeah.

MR. DAROLIA: Yeah, so what I can say is 

there's certainly research evidence based on more limited 

samples not systematic data sometimes. That certainly 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

59

demonstrates what your -- what you say, whatever threshold that 

we put forth with to measure poverty.

A lot of people's circumstances will 

fluctuate in and out of that over time. And so, you know, 

sometimes we think of this concept of research a persistent 

poverty. And so, there are certainly a lot of people also living 

under those conditions as well.

But I think you rightfully point out that in 

a lot of programs, whether for federal student loans or other 

programs, big issues that people qualify at certain times in 

their life and they don't at other times and that's certainly 

something. 

I can try to put together kind of the best we 

know on that. I can send it out but the short answer is that 

what you're describing is certainly happening.

MR. ROBERTS: Persis?

MS. YU: Thank you and thank you for this and 

I appreciate your comments earlier about how this doesn't take 

into consideration factors such as wealth which is obviously 

very important and also has huge implications when we think 

about the disparity between different races and other different 

groups of borrowers.

 I'm curious if you also have research on 

differences in expenses which is also not taken into 

consideration with this formula. And you know, certainly amongst
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

60

many immigrant communities that I, you know, that I know 

personally.

But you know, I'm sure there's other 

research out there that shows that, you know, different 

communities, also have different expenses with regard to, you 

know, whether or not they’re caring for extended family, whether 

or not they have higher expenses because of child care, other 

sorts of things and I'm wondering if that's some of the research 

that you could provide for us as well, as we considered this 

formula and what's -- and what's appropriate.

I also will just to flag for you have it, 

some data request with regard to how we break down -- how the 

income driven payment plans have worked. I won't put them in the 

chat because mine’s currently five pages long but I will e-mail 

that around to you.

MR. DAROLIA: Yeah, I'll just respond to that

and say, you know, I agree with you completely on, you know, 

these different measures and I think it's incredibly important. 

It is difficult to measure, you know, and I know researchers say 

this all the time in other measures but I'm certainly happy to -

- to try to pull together what we can and you know.

What I'd say is for a five-page data request, 

some of that is probably going to be it will be directed to the 

department and the things that I can find on my own, stuff that 

I don't try and get it done by tomorrow but I will do my best to
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

61

get as much as I can for (inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Okay, Michaela?

MS. MARTIN: Sorry, I couldn't -- it wasn't 

turned off mute for me. If you are doing any type of like 

demographical breakdown, could you also include students who 

have dependents.

So, that's like student parents because 

there's been other data by the BPR that's shown that student 

parents are some of the highest loan borrowers. And I know we 

talked about children who live in poverty and I think kind of 

connecting those dots would be really helpful.

MR. DAROLIA: Yes, so what I tried to rely on 

today, again, just kind of anticipating some of the requests was 

kind of figures and tables that are already published in other 

reports.

There are some datasets we can dive into that 

I might be able to pull out specific things that might not be 

available. Those things like parents, independent students is 

actually a research interest of mine as well in the -- they're 

not often given the same attention in some of the reporting as 

dependents, so.

MR. ROBERTS: Right. I'm not seeing any new 

hands. I just want to thank you, again, Raj for spending so much 

time with the committee.

And with the remaining time and again we do
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

62

want to ask folks who have signed up and received confirmation 

for public comments to join the meeting a little bit early, just 

so we can make sure everything is going well on your end So, we 

can bring in to the room at your slotted time. But ED, do you 

want to -- Aaron could you reshare the issue paper number 10, 

just so we can use it to guide our discussion for next -- for 

next little while?

Oh yeah, Marjorie, sorry, I didn't see your 

hand.

Up here (phonetic), okay.

MS. DORIME-WILLIAMS: So, this is actually 

about the issue paper not any questions for Raj. So, are we 

ready --

MR. ROBERTS: Great. I think we can jump right 

in. The only thing that I'll say is that there's a number of 

questions on this issue paper and you -- people probably have 

questions and comments throughout the document.

But just maybe for the sake of ease of the 

transcript, if folks want to maybe speak to like the first two 

questions initially and we can obviously return to you once 

folks have questions related to that three for the rest of 

document. So with that Marjorie, the floor is all yours.

MS. DORIME-WILLIAMS: Yeah, so the first 

question that I have about this document is the rationale behind 

-- only lowering the percentage of income for undergraduate 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

63

borrowers. There are a significant number of students who in 

fact only borrow for graduate school education.

And that's a substantial burden as well and 

my -- you -- while, I understand perhaps the earning potential 

might be the rationale. It really doesn't make sense to me why 

we would distinguish between undergraduate and graduate 

borrowers.

So, I think that is something that's really 

concerning and would sort of make an unnecessary distinction 

between when you got your loans because it doesn't change what 

you're paying and how much you have to pay back.

So on that point, I would strongly, I guess, 

suggest that we don't do that and if we're considering lowering 

the income threshold, if there are borrowers who are signing up 

for this payment plan, whether they were undergraduate or 

graduate borrowers, the issue is that they don't have the 

resources to make those payments not when they got the loan. So, 

I think that wouldn't make sense to make that distinction.

MR. ROBERTS: Great. Again throughout this, 

anything, feel free to add it to the chat. We -- and we want to 

encourage a robust transcript with its process. So with that, 

Persis, please?

MS. YU: Thank you. I second Marjorie's 

comments about separating between undergraduate and graduate I 

think, especially when you look at the data with regards to 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

64

racial disparities. We know that students of color are more 

likely to feel the need to get a graduate degree in order to 

compete with their white peers.

And so making sure making sure that whatever 

affordable repayment plan we have is available for graduate 

students is incredibly important.

I think based upon -- based upon my 

experience with clients, the stories that we hear from across 

the country and the data that Raj just shared, when I think we 

know that 150% of the federal poverty level is insufficient to

protect for a lot of folks.

IDR is simply not affordable at this moment 

and I think that raising the discretionary income threshold is 

the most important way to ensure that low income and middle 

income -- and low, middle income borrowers have the most 

protected, so that they can afford the basic necessities for 

their families.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Persis. Bethany?

MS: LILLY: So, I'm going to talk about both 1 

and 2, echoing Persis' and Marjorie's comments. I think there's 

a balance we struck here between -- as you probably guessed 

from my questions -- my comment about churn and about people 

moving between income areas.

I think there's a balance we struck between 

setting the baseline low enough that we catch a bunch of people
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

65

and then also not necessarily moving. This is with regards to 

the department's question, specifically about should the % of 

income rise as income increases?

And that's where I have -- I'm not opposed 

to that but I think implementation-wise that is going to be 

challenging for the department and for students And so, that's 

just something we should keep in mind in setting them a -- the 

kind of baseline as high as we can I think will address a lot of 

that.

On 2, I mean we just saw a collection of data 

on this and I think Dixie's point about geographic diversity is 

really important here. I don't -- I would want to increase it 

from 150% of the federal poverty line. I think that's important.

And I also wonder if that's actually a more 

appropriate way to have -- to place to have that phased out 

piece rather than to kind of addressI think what was brought up 

earlier and I -- and I apologize, I don't remember who brought 

this up, about folks kind of hitting a cliff.

We run into that a little lot of different 

public benefits program where people are getting a lot of help 

and then there's a cliff and then they're not. And so, I think 

anything we can do to reduce that cliff will be important. 

That's it for the first two.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Bethany. Michaela?

MS. MARTIN: Yes, for that second one, I -- I 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

66

think that 150% of the federal poverty line just really isn't 

like enough, like I don't think that that's high enough. I think 

that for two people that was a 2 person household is like --

like $26,000 I think.

And I think, you know, either you have two 

adults, but like for me like I'm a single mom, that means that 

like only up to $26,000 and I'm not -- I'm not sure that there's 

anywhere really that $26,000 would be enough for a single parent 

to live off of truthfully. And so, I think really being mindful 

of that implication is important.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Michaela. So, I'm, not 

seeing any hands -- oh, Jennifer, please, yeah. 

MS. HONG: Just really quickly. I issued a 

thread ( audio) of three questions, they tend to go together. I 

think you've already having some of the comments speak to number 

3. So, just how should the department think about the 

interaction between changes to the shared income devoted to 

payments and changes in the amount of income protected in terms 

of ensuring plans that are affordable for low, middle income 

loans. So, these three generally go together.

MR. ROBERTS: Yes, Michaela?

MS. MARTIN: I'm taking that as, in 

interpretation of the recommendation. I would -- I would say you 

go to that 250% that would -- that would increase the two-parent 

household to $43,000 that’s protected. I don't think that's a 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

67

huge ask.

I think that, you know, the more --

especially because when I live in Southern California, right, 

rent itself is going to be at least $1,400 for like a onebedroom, right. So, like that right there would be half of my 

income and other programs I think are starting to look at the 

250% income, particularly housing assistant which will allow 

some assistance up to, I think actually in fact, a higher level.

And I think looking at where those other 

programs are viewing their points is important but I do believe 

that in California and in many places, $43,000 a year as a 

single parent would still qualify you for public benefits. And 

at that point, I think that you should be protected.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Michaela. So, keeping in 

mind, just everyone we're now looking at third question, so feel 

free to ask pertinent questions as it relates to question number 

3 as well as 1 and 2, if you didn't get a chance to ask those 

earlier. I see Persis.

MS. YU: So, I would actually encourage to say 

that we could even go above 250%, especially if we are not -- if 

we are not going to be looking at measures that look at location 

or expenses or things of that nature.

I think we need to recognize that folks do 

have a lot of different life expenses and wealth as well and so

I think that going actually above the 250 would account for 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

68

that, if we are not going to do something that would take into 

consideration expenses. You know, I have two children, so I know 

how expensive, you know, childcare is for example. We have folks 

that come to us who may -- may technically be above 200% or 250 

of poverty but their children have extraordinary medical 

expenses.

So, I think that actually going higher would 

-- is a reasonable thing to do, 400% is I believe Medicare is 

where -- uses that as the threshold. And so, I think that there 

are other examples of other federal programs that have gone 

higher than 250.

And I think especially given the variations 

in borrower's location, their expenses, I think that would be a 

reasonable thing to do. I would also -- I would resist the urge 

to tier down. I think, sorry for that, that when we -- to like 

kind of lower the amount as income increases, I think that was 

complicated implementation-wise.

And so, we want to keep the program simple. I 

think if we could see the math out, I don't think that causes a 

cliff effect. I think protecting, you know, whatever amount for 

as many folks, you know, people with higher incomes will pay --

pay the same percentage over that amount but I don't know that 

that would necessarily create a cliff.

And maybe if we could see some -- some mathing out of what the different payment amounts would be might be 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

69

helpful for this conversation. So, thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Persis. Marjorie?

DORIME-WILLIAMS: So, I just absolutely want 

to echo everything that Michaela and Persis shared and -- and 

maybe another way to think about it. So when I think about, you 

know, the form for even applying, it's simple which is great but 

I and, you know, others that I've talked to about this issue 

often feel like we don't get an opportunity to provide enough 

information.

And so, you know, parent as well, a single 

parent and so might be able to put well it's me and my kid and 

this is what I make a month, just an account for any other 

expenses including, you know, child care and all the other 

things that come out and so, maybe procedurally it's taking a 

look at the application.

And again I don't want to make it more 

complicated but maybe as an optional or sort of other ways of 

thinking about how individuals can demonstrate their need 

because, you know, I get that letter and amount back and I'm 

like that's not going to help. So, that's I guess maybe another 

consideration in addition to thinking about raising the -- what 

we're looking at as the threshold or the guideline for, you 

know, families who -- who are enrolled in this program.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Marjorie. Bobby?

MR. AYALA: We also want to consider and kind
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

70

of echo what everybody else is saying that this marriage penalty 

that's out there, where you have a two-single income individuals 

holding off getting life starting and getting married just for 

the simple fact that once they do, then an income doubles.

And if you have two lower income individuals, 

that could mean a significant impact on the one that's on the 

income -- income repayment plans. So, I just want to consider 

that.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Bobby. Joe?

MR. SANDERS: Hi, thanks. Question here on a 

theme that we talked about another topic areas regarding 

automation. You know, people have talked about certain expenses 

that people have that they play under ability to -- to make a 

certain level of student loan payment and one of those is child 

care.

Certainly, the IRS captures a lot of data on, 

you know, how many kids a person has to make various tax credits

on that. You know, I would question whether the department could 

look at using some of that data, given that I think tax forms 

are used to determine income levels now.

So, automation has the benefit of simplicity 

and there may be other information that could be considered that 

would materially play into a person's ability to repay as the 

committee has mentioned here, and in a particular child care.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Joe. I'm seeing
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

71

Bethany's hand but at the conclusion of your comment period, 

Bethany, do we want to move on to the next set of questions? 

Seeing some -- some, none. Jennifer?

MS. HONG: Yeah. I think that makes sense, 

unless anybody has -- if there are any further comment regarding 

the lower of the percentage of income that most of it paid 

please chime in, Otherwise, we can move on after Bethany.

MS. LILLY: I wanted to actually respond to 

Joe's point because I think that's very possible that the IRS 

does have that information but one important thing that --

especially during the pandemic we have learned is that the 

lowest income families often are non-filer families, below a 

certain baseline of incomeyou don't actually have to file your 

taxes and so those folks are not in that database and I wouldn't 

want to lose those families, especially those families in many 

ways. So, I totally agree that could definitely be used but I 

just like we need to keep in at the back of our heads that there 

are folks excluded from the IRS dataset who kind of by 

definition are the lowest income folks we want to be targeting.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Bethany. And I think 

closing this out is going to be Jennifer who is stepping in on 

behalf of Student Loan Borrowers. So, welcome Jennifer, the 

floor is yours.

MS. CARDENAS: Great. Thank you. I also 

wanted to mention what Bobby said. I think one thing we -- the 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

72

trajectory of this is that we forget about nontraditional 

students. So, we think like 18 year olds going into college but 

there's other students, especially students of color who later 

in life go back into education and they also are affected by 

this.

Because by that time, we already have a 

family, we already have children. So, I just kind of wanted to 

add to Bobby's statement. Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you. And then, Aaron, if 

you want to scroll down a little bit, Jennifer do you want to --

do you want to just restate the next set of questions you think 

are best to consider as a -- as a group for the committee?

MS. HONG: Sure. Let's see question number 4 

is regarding existing IDR plans and they either use the same

time to forgiveness or vary the time based upon whether a 

borrower has any graduate school loans.

Should the department consider other bases 

for variations in time to forgiveness such as whether a borrower 

is consistently low income or whether the borrower has lower 

loan balances or any other factors?

I could go -- I can read five -- five is a 

different issue but that way just to kind of get people 

thinking. A lot of borrowers raised concerns about how interest 

accumulation results and then wait more after years in 

repayment. And that can get very disheartening for borrowers, 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

73

how should the department address this and should that approach 

varied based upon factors which is borrower income.

MR. ROBERTS: Okay, thanks, Jennifer. I see

Daniel’s hand first, thank you. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Thank you. I have thoughts on 

both of these issues. So, first of all, the department states in 

its -- it's prefix or introduction to these issues that many 

low-income or low-balance borrowers still end up delinquent or

default on these -- on their loans.

And you know, again, I'm really concern about 

low balance borrowers. I think that there needs to be a shorter 

timeframe to forgiveness for low balance borrowers, especially 

those that are some college and no degree.

Those are the students who I'm -- I'm very 

concerned about in this process. They experienced the debt 

without the benefit of the college education in terms of income.

I'd also like to explore in number 5, the --

and this -- this is why it ties in for me, the possibility of 

either zero interest rate during a period of income-based 

repayment where there's lowest income or the possibility of 

forgiving interest. The principal of needs analysis is that, you

know, you looked at the income that the student has or family 

has to make payment for college at that time and I would echo 

the idea for repayment as well by, you know, by adding the 

interest one (phonetic) or accumulating interest in a sense 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

74

where we're saying is, you know, we validate that you a 

difficulty paying based on your income right now but we're going 

to hold you accountable for this in the future.

And that seems to be penalizing, so I would 

strongly suggest the department what could either is a zero% 

interest rate during, you know, income-based repayment if 

possible or if not, forgiveness of any interest assessed that is 

unpaid.

So, we're not facing an accumulating loan 

balance for periods during which the payment is less than the 

minimum required. And as a final piece, I would also suggest 

that the department look at forgiveness as you go.

So, the other way to look at this is to 

forgive a portion of principal for each year that a student is 

actually in an income-based repayment period as another way of 

approaching this rather than doing this as a lump sum at the 

end. 

Perhaps, there's a mechanism by which if the, 

you know, income-based repayment period requires 20 years for 

example, a 20th of principal is forgiven at each of the years 

that was unpaid during the timeframe that the student is in 

repayment. So, those are my three thoughts. I'm happy to type 

them in the chat but I wanted to lay them on the table.

MR. ROBERTS: You beat me to it, Daniel, yes,

please add them to the chat. I'm seeing Bethany. Go ahead.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

75

MS. LILLY: So, I’d like to echo everything 

Daniel said. I also would like to reiterate our comment earlier 

about differentiating between undergrad and graduate school 

loans. Completely agree that we should be prioritizing the 

lowest income borrowers.

And I -- in terms of the interest 

accumulation piece though, how does this interact with the 

interest accumulation proposal that we considered earlier in the 

week? I apologize, my brain is a little fried but if someone 

could walk me through that quickly, I would appreciate it 

because it's -- I'm just trying to cross-reference in my head 

and it's not coming through.

MR. BARKOWITZ: Can I offer you a response? 

One of my concerns about interest capitalization is the deals 

we're capitalizing and adding it to balance but it doesn't 

remove it. So, that the idea here is that our -- our proposal 

before wouldn't add it to principal but would still stay out 

there as a pending obligation for the borrower to pay, if 

indeed, their income does resuscitate at some point or does go 

higher.

 MR. ROBERTS: Does that satisfy your question, 

Bethany?

MS. LILLY: To some degree, yes.

MR. ROBERTS: All right, thank you. Persis?

MS. YU: Thank you. I have a lot of thoughts 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

76

and I will try to get through them in my three minutes allotted. 

So, I mean I think first in terms of thinking about the 

repayment period, I -- this is another area where I think more 

data would be helpful.

 I'm particularly concerned about borrowers who 

for long periods of time has zero dollar payments and why we're 

making them fill out paperwork for 20 years to continue to 

verify that they're persistently in poverty, makes no sense to 

me. And I think it sets them up for failure and for default 

frankly.

So, I think it would be really helpful to have 

data about, you know, how long folks, you know, like what is the 

population of folks who after three years, five years have 

continuing -- have zero dollar payments? What's the likelihood 

that they're -- they're ever going to actually repay their 

loans? Can we just forgive those?

I have some concerns about modulating the 

forgiveness period based upon the balance. The data shows that 

black borrowers in particular have to take on more debt and 

therefore, by doing -- by structuring this by loan balance, you 

are disadvantaging those who have to take on more debt in order 

to attend school.

And so I'm concerned about modulating in that 

way. I do agree that I think there needs to be some kind of way

in which we capture folks faster, we give people progress. I 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

77

would be open to suggestions about doing certain percentages by 

year.

I like the idea of people making progress as 

they go which I think kind of leads into the next part about 

interest. I think we just have to get rid of negatively 

amortizing loans.

One (phonetic), it's a real deterrent for 

folks to get into IDR and persist in IDR when they see their 

loan balances continue to grow. I think that it -- and for most 

folks or for a lot of folks, I don't know -- I don't have the 

data on this but I -- for the folks that I see, it means that 

they're not going to pay back their loans and it dissuades them 

from staying in the program.

We need to get rid of negative amortization 

and also I don't know if the -- I don't see this in the question 

but I also -- we considered in the public service loan 

forgiveness conversation what counts as a qualifying payment as 

well. And I’d like that to be a part of the conversation, you 

know, deferments forbearances and as -- as we raise then periods 

in which borrowers --

MR. TOTONCHI: Thirty seconds. 

MS. YU: -- should have been into an incomedriven repayment plan but were not because of perhaps 

malfeasance or steering on the part of their servicer.

And then, the last point that I will raise is
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78

because I don't know where else to raise it in here but on the 

interest capitalization question, there's deferments. And this 

is where -- I wonder if we couldn't create deferment-like 

programs into the ICR statute because then we could ensure that 

any interest if it does accrue does not get capitalize. So, I'll 

turn it over there.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you. And this is to 

everyone, for whatever reason you run into three minutes, you're 

more than welcome just to re-queue. We just want to get as many 

people commenting as possible. So, Michaela, please.

MS. MARTIN: I was considering yielding my 

time to Persis, especially, you know, the only thing that I --

that I could add is that, you know, I'd been following student 

loans on Twitter because, you know, it's a great way to see 

students' voice.

And there are like so many stories of folks 

saying like, oh cool, I'd been paying for five years or seven 

years and I have not paid a dollar towards my -- towards my --

towards my principal.

And so, I just really wanted to point that

out that like I don't in this case have a solution which is why 

my purpose is to keep going but I think it's just incredibly 

important to acknowledge that when you're enrolling folks in 

these programs, we do know that there's -- there's a lot of them

that just are going to wait out that 20 years or not be able to 
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79

have it forgiven because it goes into -- it goes into other 

collections. Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Michaela. Joe and then 

Persis and then we'll just do, you know, do a quick sweep of the 

room and we might have time to move on for the next two 

questions. So Joe, please.

MR. SANDERS: Yeah, hi. Lots to address here 

but I'm going to focus on point Persis raised about negatively 

amortizing interest and how it dissuades borrowers from entering 

the program.

Part of my job is to review all the higher 

education complaints that come in via the Illinois Attorney 

General's Office. We had over 800 in 2019. A consistent theme in 

those complaints is rising student loan balances and frustration 

with that situation.

That to the extent that the department is 

considering the structure of the IDR program, I think that you 

would see more uptake in IDR programs to the extent that 

negatively amortizing interest was removed.

There's a really interesting paper from 2018 

that I will drop into the chat that has the University of 

Maryland study where they looked at how the department currently 

talks about IDR which emphasizes sort of a disclosure or a 

warning on the fact that your interest is going to increase 

versus a separate message that they crafted around the 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

80

insurance-like aspects of IDR.

In other words, that if your income drops or 

you experienced loss of employment, your payment will drop and 

they saw a material difference in student uptake with those two 

messages. So, I see negatively amortizing interest as something 

that consumers don't understand.

You don't see it in other consumer financial 

products and it adds to confusion and frustration with the 

income-driven repayment program. I think that removing it would 

be a benefit to the program and to borrowers.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Joe. I'm seeing Persis 

and then I'm seeing Suzanne, stepping in on behalf of State 

Regulators. So Persis, the floor is yours.

MS. YU: Thank you. So, not to be a broken 

record for -- throughout these different topics but I want to 

also raise that anything that we do needs to be retroactive. And 

we also need to take into consideration the FFEL borrowers.

So, I had a number of messages from FFEL

borrowers and/or borrowers who had FFEL loans then consolidated 

into the Direct loan program who had been in repayment for 

decades.

And we need -- whatever we do and whatever 

guidelines we come up with, with how we do cancellation we need 

to somehow take into consideration the decades that people have

been in repayment.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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We need apply our roles retroactively, so 

that borrowers are not in a position where they have been in a 

forbearance for the last 20 years but now they come into this 

plan and they decade or two in order to continue paying their 

loans. So, that's just it, my word of the day is retroactivity. 

Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Persis and Suzanne?

MS. MARTINDALE: Yes, plus one to Persis, also 

I appreciate Joe reminding. I think I may have said this as well 

that it's very unusual to see interest accrual and 

capitalization in the consumer finance context.

This is really an outlier here and a huge 

problem. You know, I will also note that, you know, I've -- we 

hear very frequently that the interest accumulation and 

capitalization event is a shock to people when they first 

experienced it.

It is not what consumer expectation would be, 

student borrower expectation would be. It's kind of hard to get 

your mind around also because you don't necessarily know what 

your income is going to be year over year, and what -- and what 

your debt income ratio will be as a result.

I know we've already talked about the 

department's consideration of removing interest capitalization.

I want to reiterate our strong support for that, that would be 

more protective of student borrowers.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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And in addition, I want to tie -- make a 

quick tie to IDR and PSLF, right because I hear all the time and 

actually I even checked in with Berkeley's Financial Aid Office 

the other day to ask them, you know, talk about the rulemaking, 

and they reiterated back.

There are a lot of students who are skittish 

about betting on a public service career because they're worried 

that IDR is going to make their loans inflate and they may not 

get PSLF at the end of it.

There's a lot of concern and so I hate to 

think that the way that these programs are structured could have 

a chilling effect on -- on, you know, folks who actually do want 

to go into public service which we've been talking about today 

where, you know, many of those jobs are less lucrative than just 

a pure private sector job.

So -- and then we should also be thinking 

about the interplay between the IDR plans and PSLF throughout 

this process to remember the kinds of students and student 

borrowers who are going to be impacted by both of those programs 

at the same time. Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Suzanne. I'm going to 

give the final word for Jeri for questions 4 and 5.

MS. O'BRYAN-LOSEE: I just want to say thank 

you to Suzanne. That's exactly what so many people have problems

with. Thank you for articulating it so well and if I could give 
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83

her a plus 1 million, I would because that is -- she hit it 

right on the head.

MR. ROBERTS: And the inflation rate for the

pluses in chat is really out of control. And I do want to 

acknowledge that Dr. McTier has taken a seat at the table, so 

welcome.

So with that, Jennifer, I'm going to turn it 

over to you to reintroduce our next set of questions.

MS. HONG: Thank you. Thank you, Brady. So, 

this is kind of borne out by information that Raj just shared 

with us. And I think some of you have already spoken to this but 

we could build this up further.

Question number 6, data show that underserved 

populations in communities of color face higher rates to student 

loan struggles and others. What design factors and changes to 

better support equitable access and success in repayment? That's 

question number 6.

Since we've been taking two at a time, we're 

moving -- move on with 7 as well. Observers note that existing 

IDR plans may not be optimally designed to reduce delinquency 

and default. Borrowers at the highest risk of delinquency and 

default are typically noncompleters who owe low balances, yet 

who do not enroll in existing IDR plans at a high rate.

What design factors and changes can better 

support borrowers at high risk of delinquency and default or
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84

otherwise encourage enrollment in IDR plans that match their 

financial circumstances and loan balances? Again, we're 

concerned about these borrowers that have low balances and lowincome.

And I think David -- David, we touched upon 

all these issues but if we could build off that discussion a 

little bit further, thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Jennifer and just as --

we're about a little over 50 minutes from public comment, I'm 

going to ask everyone, again, if you'd been assigned a slot to 

speak, please start joining this meeting. So, we can just make 

sure everything is set and ready to go right at 3:30.

So with that, Persis, I see your hand.

MS. YU: Thank you. Yeah, so I think I've 

mentioned this before but I think it always bears repeating that 

students of color have to take on higher loan balances. And so, 

it -- as we are thinking about equity and how we structure this 

program, I think while there are a lot of low balance borrowers 

who are in default and that's an incredibly important thing to 

acknowledge that disproportionately borrowers of color have 

higher loan balances.

And so, I would like resist any urge to kind 

of segment by loan balance. I think we also should take into 

consideration, there's actually a recent journal article that 

came out showing that student loan borrowers of color 
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experienced higher rates of servicing errors and abuses.

And so we know that there are access problems 

with accessing income-driven repayment and those are borne out 

by student loan borrowers of color primarily. So, we need to --

we need as we're crafting to take into consideration what 

happens to a borrower when they're steered.

And then finally, for this round the options 

for borrowers and defaults, borrowers of color default at twice 

the rate of their white peers. And so having options for 

borrowers in default is critically important.

The current regulations unnecessarily restrict 

the access to income–driven repayment to borrowers in default. I 

don't -- my reading of the statute does not prohibit defaulted 

borrowers from accessing income-driven repayment. They should be 

allowed into the payment plan.

They should have their time counting towards 

cancellation, especially any involuntary payments that are above 

the income-driven payment amount should count towards 

cancellation. And I think that would move us a lot closer -- a 

lot closer, not quite there, to equity.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Persis and I'm seeing 

more hands but really quick, I just want to recognize that 

Jennifer has joined the table on behalf of Student Loan 

Borrowers. So, I see Bethany, David, Michaela and then Jennifer.

So, Bethany, the floor is yours.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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MS. LILLY: I want to echo everything Persis 

just said and I want to bring up something that's slightly more 

radical in the context of what I'd been saying this whole time 

which is why are we not automating this? Like, I'm completely 

and utterly baffled by that.

Like if you have a student who is starting to 

go into default like the best thing to do is to automatically 

put them in an IDR plan and that's going to prevent a lot of 

problems. If it's doable under the statute, I don't understand 

why EDisn't doing it. I -- it's baffling to me I will just say.

And I want to say that also disability rates 

are higher in communities of color, they're higher in low-income 

communities. That means you're by definition going to have more 

problems with paperwork and with the bureaucratic barriers that 

we talked about repeatedly during this entire session.

And so for me, automation in this is kind of 

the be all and end all -- that I don't -- I think we should be 

doing everything else that Persis said as well but I just -- I 

want to hit that point home because I think that there's a lot 

of problems here that could be addressed by that.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Bethany. David?

MR. TANDBERG: Yeah, thank you Persis for 

those really good recommendations and I would reference those 

that she provided in -- in her comments just now but also 

earlier suggestions around how we do with interest and -- and 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

87

Bethany's reference to automation.

And I think what that gets to is that we will 

develop the best policy if we address those populations that are 

currently being poorest served, right. So if we -- if we keep in 

mind students of color, low-income students, first generation 

students and design the policy to better serve them, all 

students are going to be better served, right.

And so, I think that is absolutely where our 

focus should be, better information, automation, and readjusting 

the terms of the IDR so, that we're not putting them in a worse 

position financially over the long term, definitely putting 

folks that are facing default into IDR and doing it 

automatically if we can.

All of that is going to benefit all students 

who are borrowers but particularly it's going to benefit those 

that are facing the largest structural constraints. So, I'll 

just leave it there.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, David. Michaela?

MS. MARTIN: Yeah, just a consideration, 

because the question asked about like considerations for the 

good (phonetic) design. And I think that really thinking about 

not punishing people for being poor, these programs shouldn't 

make you owe more just because you didn't have money. It just 

seems incredibly counterintuitive.

And then also, I want to build upon 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

88

marginalized communities, low-income and students of color, not 

that we have a lot of data on student parents and I will 

continue to talk about them throughout these, particularly 

because I am one. We're also representing independent students, 

any student who is in enrolled in college automatically because 

of an independent student when they have a child. 

So, a large portion of the folks that I am 

speaking for are also parents. Data shows that about two out of 

five African American women currently enrolled in the 

undergraduate program are also student parents.

So, we're talking about almost half of -- of 

these students also having dependents and so then we're also 

talking about being low-income and coming out of these things. 

Students of color and low-income students have the highest --

have higher rates of being student parents, not taking into 

account family composition, not just family size.

Again, going back to, you know, if you're a 

two-person household, you could be a single parent or you could 

be a two-income earner. If you have a three-income, you could 

have one child and two incomes. And I think considering how that 

composition is in this is really important when you're designing 

that program.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Michaela. Jennifer?

MS. CARDENAS: I just want to say, thank you, 

Michaela but I also want to -- I want to get clarification 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

89

before we go into public comments. That's why I kind of raised 

my hand early. On the next steps that are on the issues around 

defaults that were brought up by Persis.

I want to just clarify, will ED be giving a 

presentation tomorrow morning on the conversation that they're 

having because that's what was mentioned earlier but we didn't 

really get a clarification on that. I want to do it now before 

we go into public comments. Thank you.

MS. MACK: I think the clarification that I can 

add is that I suggested hitting the pause button because David 

asked perhaps maybe the department wanted to respond on some of 

the issues where the plan forward on what was raised in Persis' 

proposal to add additional topics.

And instead of rush directly to a consensus 

check which may have been to add those but it may have also been 

to not add those to perhaps allow everyone to further consider 

that, give the department an opportunity to respond, if there is 

a response to be given.

And then, we can move forward with the -- the 

consensus check. That was what my thinking was behind the 

suggestion. Does that -- does that address it, Jennifer?

MS. CARDENAS: A little bit. So, just for 

clarification we will be getting --

MS. MACK: Okay.

MS. CARDENAS: -- those results in the 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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morning? That way we know like where the stance is and what 

we're doing with them. If that's something (phonetic), yes, it's 

answered. Thank you.

MS. MACK: Okay, so ED let me ask you. 

Earlier, I suggested a pause button because David had asked more 

clarification perhaps around ED's perspective on that in terms 

of moving forward. I wanted to hit the pause button, so that you 

could respond. I don't know that you have a response at this 

time but I'm happy to invite it to answer Jennifer's questions.

MS. HONG: I mean all I can say at this point, 

no. We won't -- we won't have a presentation available for you 

all tomorrow. We need to get through our topics first. So, we're 

very worried about not getting through things like, yeah, false 

certification.

We wanted to finish the discussion on IDR. 

We want to Raj to kind of share more information with us. We 

want to get through false certification as well as Pell Grant

eligibility for prison (phonetic) education.

So -- and we also -- we further have concerns 

about the feasibility about -- at least one of the proposals 

that has been put forth. And we just -- we can't at this point 

weigh in on it. We know, again, that we are already proposing to 

do regulations directly related to debt collection which do not 

live in the EHA.

So, we would, you know, we would need several 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

91

answers on any of those items to discuss that. We're just --

we're not prepared to do so right now.

MR. ROBERTS: Right, thank you. Joe, the floor 

is yours.

MR. SANDERS: Yeah, hi. Are we -- are we 

addressing questions 6 yet?

MR. ROBERTS: Yeah, we are. Yeah those are 

introduced.

MR. SANDERS: Okay, okay. So, I think that 

question 6 gets to issues of borrower support and borrower 

support as currently provided through servicers. Servicers are 

supposed to be your information conduit to go to when you have 

purchased like loans about issues of repayment, about, you know, 

how to deal with, as question 6 says, “student loan struggles.” 

And you know, what the Attorneys General had 

consistently seen in the student loan servicing space is a lack 

of the kind of detailed information that borrowers need in order 

to navigate these systems.

And I think that as you have populations 

that don't have as much experience with consumer financial 

products and debt generally within their families, the need for 

that support increases. And so, you know, there are a couple of 

ways to deal with this one, something that I mentioned that

Bethany, has certainly brought up this automation and 

simplicity.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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One of the things, you know, in the Consumer 

Fraud Bureau, the Attorney General's Office, when we get relief 

for consumers, through a lawsuit or settlement we do everything 

we can to avoid a claims process or any kind of administrative 

burden.

So when you're thinking about question 6, 

reducing the need for the borrower to take action or to gain 

information or to make some kind of a choice, I think we have 

to.

The second piece goes to the amount of touch 

and support that borrowers get. I -- I have had some interesting 

discussions with the Rhode Islands --

MR. TOTONCHI: Thirty seconds.

MR. SANDERS: -- Rhode Island Student Loan 

Authority. They instituted a state level income driven repayment

plan and one of the things that they think made that plan 

successful is that they took their servicing in-house.

And when the servicing is in-house, there's 

a connection between the profit that the servicer makes and 

repayment of the loan. So, I would encourage the department. I 

can drop a link in this data on (inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Joe. I think we have 

time for probably one more -- two more, I see Noelia and Persis'

hands. But, I just want to quickly recognize some primary folks 

who are rejoining us. So, we had Misty back at the table, 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

93

representing Four-Year Private Institutions, Jeri, representing 

Student Loan Borrowers and Jessica representing Proprietary 

School. So with that, Noelia.

MS. GONZALEZ: Yeah, I want to echo the --

those comments about support but I think we're also missing the 

support that universities and schools give their students. I 

know that many campuses have put in financial wellness 

programming, financial literacy programming to really guide 

students through the, do you need to borrow? If you do, can you 

lower how much you're borrowing?

And then as they near graduation or they 

exited the campuses, walking them through those borrower 

repayment options, what are some of those loan forgiveness 

programs that they may qualify for?

So, I think that campuses and universities and 

colleges are very important -- play an important role to this 

and really guiding students through that, what happens after I 

leave campus whether through graduation or dropout, so.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Noelia and then 

Persis? I think you are our last committee comment for the day 

before we open it up to the public.

MS. YU: Thank you. I just want to return the

point that was raised earlier that if the department is not 

planning on making a presentation about the proposals that I 

have motioned to have included that we then take a consensus 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

94

check on whether or not those should be included.

MR. ROBERTS: Understood. Let me do this. 

Aaron (phonetic), would you mind stop sharing your screen very 

briefly? If we want -- we can have more conversation on this 

tomorrow morning just to -- because I think it might eat into

the public comment period but I am willing to just take a thumbs

(phonetic) vote right now. But Persis since you raised it, I'm 

willing to see what you're interested in doing.

MS. YU: I'm happy to see if there are other 

folks in the committee who would like to speak to this. In which 

case, I'm happy to defer to tomorrow but if there's no need for 

further conversation, I think you heard a lot from me, so then I 

would just love to get everyone on the record on what they 

think.

MR. ROBERTS: So, I see at least one hand up 

right now. So if it's okay with you, I'm going to call in Daniel 

and then we can open up tomorrow's proceedings with this chat, 

if it's okay with you.

MR. BARKOWITZ: I would specifically like to 

encourage the department to consider Persis' suggestion around 

using IDR as a recovery method from default, if we're not 

willing to consider the entire piece. It seems to me that it's 

completely relevant and appropriate given the conversation we're 

having about restructuring the IDR program.

So, I would offer support to that piece, if 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

95

not to the entire piece that I also support but at minimum I see 

the direct relevance of that particular piece to the 

conversation we're having.

MR. ROBERTS: Jennifer?

MS. HONG: Yeah, just to reaffirm. That's 

always been our stance to the extent that these proposals are 

relevant to the discussion we're having and we're happy to hear 

them.

MR. ROBERTS: So with that, why don't we -- if 

we're okay just opening up tomorrow with that check because 

again, we have a full period for public comment because it is 

right at 3:30. Can I actually -- can I get thumbs on, on that? I 

know consensus check or a consensus check is an annoying thing 

to ask for.

I'm seeing thumbs, I'm seeing sideways but no, 

I do appreciate that and then we will return to this I promise.

So with that, I think we are ready to admit 

our first person. So, Cindy could you go ahead and admit Brian

Whitehead who's a veteran representing himself.

Oh and I see -- oh there he is. Yes, enable 

his audio. Hi, Mr. Whitehead, can you hear us? Good afternoon 

Mr. Whitehead. How are you?

MR. WHITEHEAD: I'm good. How is it going 

today?

MR. ROBERTS: Good. You have three minutes. Go 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

96

ahead.

MR. WHITEHEAD: All right, good afternoon. My 

name is Brian Whitehead and I'm from Loganville, Georgia. I 

served in the U.S. Army from 2000 to 2005. And after I left the

service, I attended ITT Tech from 2006 to 2008 to study computer 

and electrical engineering.

I graduated from the program but now after 

almost a year of looking for a job, I was never able to get one 

in the field that I study. For the school who recruited me, they 

told me that 90% of their students were graduate -- were 

guaranteed jobs right out of the gate with average seller 

(phonetic) starting between 60 and 70,000 a year.

That was not true and top of that I had 

student loan debt around $50,000 federal and $40,000 in private 

loans, even though ITT told me that my GI bill benefits will 

cover my entire education. Right now I have a job because of the 

skills that I have learned in the military not because of that 

degree from ITT Tech.

Still, it's a job that barely pays the bills 

and I have to ask for help from my family and friends. I wanted 

to complete school to get into a career where I could earn a 

decent living but ITT's degrees aren't worth the paper that

they’re printed on.

I had classes taught by people who admitted 

they weren't qualified to teach computer programming or anything 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

97

tech-related. I know if I had gotten a degree from a more 

reputable university along with my military experience, I'll be 

in a much better place.

ITT Tech maybe closed but I had to live with 

the debt and frustration that they left behind. I wanted to 

testify here today to ask you to stop schools like ITT Tech, so 

that they can't get away with lying, to get veterans to enroll 

in their schools.

They need to be held accountable for their 

lies because they have the power to destroy our career goals and 

ruin our lives. Thank you for your time.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you very much for your 

comment.

MR. WHITEHEAD: Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: So, next up, if you can let in 

Amy Laitenen representing New America from the waiting room. And 

Amy, I think I'm hearing, you just need to the pause the 

livestream. I think we're getting a bit of an echo otherwise, 

got it. And then whenever you ready, you have three minutes.

Ms. Laitenen, can you hear us?

MS. LAITENEN: Oh yes, I'm sorry I thought 

Bradley was still speaking.

MR. ROBERTS: Oh no, you're okay, you're okay. 

You have three minutes, go ahead.

MS. LAITENEN: Great. Thank you. Thank you so 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

98

much for taking the time for public comment. I wanted to bring 

up an issue that I was surprised didn't come up yesterday in 

relation to issue paper number 8 on recovery from institutions.

In terms of the issue paper that the

department put out, I was frankly surprise to see such a weak 

opening bid come from the Biden administration, given the 

promises during the campaign and then in the opening months of 

the administration to really crack down on predatory colleges in 

order to prevent real harm to students and borrowers.

Borrower defense should have both -- both 

the back-end and the front-end function. It should help 

borrowers who already have been harmed and it should also 

prevent future students and borrowers from being harmed. By 

making it optional for the department to act against the school, 

if the department has found that a borrower is entitled to 

relief his proposal fails to prevent future harm. For current

borrowers, all we can really provide is financial relief but we 

can't make up for the other harms that -- real harms they 

experienced, lost time, energy and momentum and the emotional 

toll of all of it.

We cannot make those borrowers whole but we 

can and must try to prevent those significant harms for future 

borrowers. I agree that students shouldn't have to wait for the

department to take action against a school before they get the 

relief entitled to them but the department should not have the 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

99

discretion on whether or not to take action against a school 

that harmed a student.

Predatory schools need to know that 

accountability is not optional. The proposal as written lets 

schools off the hook and absolves them of their decisions that 

harm students.

I'm so, so, so glad that this group is trying 

to strengthen the back-end protection, the borrower defense for 

those who have already been harmed by predatory schools but I 

urge you not to be inadvertently complicit in allowing future 

students and borrowers to be harmed by ignoring the front-end 

protections. Thank you for all that you're doing and good luck 

with the rest of the neg-reg.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you very much for your 

comment. So, next up we have Ms. Trisha Purdon who is the 

Director for the Office of Rural Prosperity to the Kansas 

Department of Commerce. And Ms. Purdon, the floor is yours, once 

we get audio and video up and running.

MS. PURDON: Good afternoon. Thank you so much 

for having me to speak to the committee. I appreciate it very 

much. I'm Trisha Purdon, I'm with the Kansas Office of Rural 

Prosperity in the Kansas Department of Commerce.

 I'm speaking specifically about rural 

communities but this issue that I wanted to bring up to the 

committee really pertains to both urban and rural. I wanted to 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

100

speak, really referring to issue paper number 5 regarding the 

department's questions, taking ideas on what should be included 

in the definition of the primary services of the private 

organization.

Specifically, the three areas that I wanted --

the committee to consider is allowing organizations that are not 

specifically defined in the current descriptions such as 

economic development organizations, Chambers of Commerce and 

main street organizations which are often 501(c)(3) 

organizations but fully, if not -- or partially funded by local 

government or state government organizations.

They are often 501 (c)(6's) because of their 

need to have private business memberships to cover that fund. 

However, these organizations are critical pieces of our local 

economies and often are the linchpins of whether or not a 

community maintains their rural health care facilities, mental 

health facilities.

And often are integral in pieces of public 

safety, public interest and legal services addressing poverty 

and public health issues. It's especially true in rural 

communities where there -- there's gaps in addressing these 

issues for communities.

And so, I would like the committee to 

consider including these organizations, specifically in the 

guidance as those are often areas that are confusing in 
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regarding the PSLF program and when they're filing the 

requirements.

One of the reasons, if you have difficulty, 

I thought, about including them is the fact underneath the 

public interest legal services. It does mention that these legal 

services are funded in whole or in part by state, local or 

federal or tribal government and these organizations typically 

are funded in that -- in that framework and provide legal 

services.

For example, organizations might fund or 

assist a small business in filing an LLC or getting an S corp or 

C corp set up, although they're definitely not attorneys they

assist these businesses in this critical pieces, and often case 

(phonetic) in these rural areas.

So with that, thank you very much, Committee, 

for listening to me. We hope that these organizations will be 

considered and I look forward to hearing the results. Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you so much for your 

comments. Next up we have David Kociemba and please correct me 

if I'm pronouncing that incorrectly who is an East Coast 

Organizer representing the American Association of University 

Professors. So, Mr. Kociemba, you have the floor for three 

minutes.

You just got to unmute yourself.

MR. KOCIEMBA: All right.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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MR. ROBERTS: There you go.

MR. KOCIEMBA: Good afternoon. My name is 

David Kociemba. I'm an East Coast for the American Association 

of University Professors. I was an adjunct professor for 16 

years at five institutions in the Boston area.

I'm not alone in leaving the profession. 

There's an entire sub-genre of quit-lit writing devoted to the 

phenomenon. For millions of academics like I was, your 

department and its loan servicers have broken their pledge to 

recognize those who live a life of public service.

Ninety-eight% of those who have applied have

been rejected. While proposals on the table had promised, 

fundamental changes are needed to address the realities of what 

10 years of laboring as an adjunct professor looks like.

It's extremely difficult for adjunct 

professors to have their work recognize by the existing program. 

Though, it is heartening to hear from so many negotiators today 

that you understand this. University administrators make sure 

that adjunct faculty don't hit the current eligibility 

threshold, lest the university give them health insurance.

So, career adjunct faculty cobble together 

work in multiple universities that's more than full time work 

but just barely 30-hour in state and federal definitions. 

Earlier today, folks asked for data related to the contingency 

crisis.
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Contingent faculty are disproportionately 

women and racial minorities. Forty-three% are part-time and 

based on the AAP's annual survey, are just scraping by on the 

national average of $3,556 a course.

Unfortunately, there isn't a recent or 

conclusive study on the average adjunct's course load but a 2010 

study, estimated it was just shy of three classes per academic 

year.

Most get no contributions towards health or 

retirement and have unemployment so unpredictable, they might 

not know their own course load a month away from the start of 

term. Don't let the tweed the fool you. Being a college 

professor is no long a reliable path to the middle class.

I talked to faculty we needed to file for 

unemployment who work weekends and nights at other jobs or who

wanted to find food pantries where they wouldn't run in to their 

students. The path out of crushing student loan debt should be 

less onerous for those whose employment is the most precarious.

To echo what others have already said at the 

negotiating table today, go beyond the 2.5 work hours proposed 

for every credit hour perhaps by adding on required office hours 

or by using a more generous conversion rate.

Under the current proposal, an adjunct 

professor would need to teach four, three credit courses each 

semester to qualify for PSLF despite their full-time peers 
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getting benefits with one less course this semester. So-called 

part-time professors advised --

MR. ROBERTS: Thirty seconds.

MR. KOCIEMBA: -- write and do research and 

please recognize that most courses are taught during the ninemonth academic year when calculating eligibility and remember 

faculty like me that are still paying off loans they took out in 

the 1990s. Thank you for your time.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Kociemba for your 

comments. The next commentary we had is Mr. David Mayfield, 

representing himself. So, Mr. Mayfield once we have your sound 

working, the floor is yours.

Mr. Mayfield, can you hear me?

MR. MAYFIELD: I can hear you now.

MR. ROBERTS: Great. If you had video, feel 

free to turn it on, otherwise you have three minutes for public 

comment.

MR. MAYFIELD: I'm trying to get everything 

up.

All right, can you see me now?

MR. ROBERTS: We can see you and hear you. Go 

ahead.

MR. MAYFIELD: All right, so my story with ITT 

Technical was to --I was told by the ITT employees that if I 

extended the -- that I attended the school and stayed the course 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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at school that I could get a five-figure salary -- starting out 

salary starting at $55,000 per year.

I find that this was not the case as I 

couldn't even find a job or get any interviews and I thought the 

information that they told me for employment prospecting was 

very misleading. However, going into what else I was told about 

the program at school was fully funded through my Montgomery GI 

Bill by Post-9/11 that I wouldn't have any debt at all.

I would talk to student counselors to confirm 

this and that my -- the GI Bill was 100% but now I'm stuck with 

federal and private student loans that was taken out in my name. 

I was misled about the cost and everything that was being 

financed in addition to that.

With career services, ITT told me that I had 

contacts and they had contacts and will help me to get a job but 

I received no phone calls, no interviews from their alleged 

firms. I had meetings with counselors countless times who told 

me that I would need to stay the course at ITT Tech to be able 

to be sought after for the job market but that was not the case 

at all as well.

I ended up having -- so to get a job is -- as

an installer with no help at ITT and this wasn't even a part of 

my career study. In addition, I would like to share that the 

professors were mostly graduates to ITT Technical Institute and 

they -- these classes were not challenging.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

106

And then, I will receive a good education, 

that my experience wasn't credited, but I figured out and found 

out that these activities didn't, they were violations and it 

was -- it wasn't even applicable for the consumer protection 

laws. And now I'm stuck with private student loans as a military 

service member, as a veteran.

I served our country and I stood for honor, 

courage and commitment and I was lied to and I found it the 

parody is that I have -- we have enemies, the world does. And I 

served our country to protect our rights from these types of 

enemies.

And yet now, I have to worry about some of 

these things in addition and where we are -- even the United 

States of America where we have to now have office (phonetic) 

and education. I think that's not right.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you very much for your 

comment Mr. Mayfield. The next person coming into the room is 

from the wait list and is Ms. Krissta Kirschenheider, 

representing herself. So it's -- if we could admit her, great. 

Hi, good afternoon, Ms. Kirschenheider. Can you hear me?

MS. KIRSCHENHEIDER: I can hear you.

MR. ROBERTS: All right, you have three 

minutes for public comment, please.

MS. KIRSCHENHEIDER: Okay, I'm sorry if I 

(inaudible) speaking. Good afternoon.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

107

Hello, could -- sorry.

MR. ROBERTS: We can -- we can hear you, sorry 

about that, you have three minutes, go ahead

MS. KIRSCHENHEIDER: You can hear me?

MR. ROBERTS: Yeah, we can hear you.

MS. KIRSCHENHEIDER: Yes, I can hear you now. 

Thank you. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me to 

speak before you today. I wanted to introduce myself. My name is 

Krissta Kirschenheider. I work for legal services and I've done 

that for the last 12 years.

I wanted to tell you a little about my 

experience with the public service loan forgiveness program. 

Yeah, I have 60 credits to date, even though I had been working 

in public service for almost 12 years. Sorry, I hearing an echo, 

let me see if I can change this.

MR. ROBERTS: You might have the live stream 

up, if you're able to pause that, that's typically--

MS. KIRSCHENHEIDER: Yeah, I cut that out, 

yes. So -- I only have 60 credits to date after almost 12 years 

of working in public service and I had -- my career is working 

with programs, Social Security, FEMA, VA for all sorts of people 

and this program has been the most complicated -- complex, 

convoluted and I'm a lawyer, in a program I ever had to deal 

with.

I can tell you that at one point because my 
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loans were sold to different service providers, I finally have 

to switch my loans to the Department of Education, so that I 

could get an answer to what qualified because I didn't know that 

if I overpaid one month, the next month those weren't counting, 

if I underpaid by a few cents.

And so, when I was switching over for a year, 

I didn't have any payments during that year. I was put on a 

deferment and so that whole year of work didn’t count. The first 

three years of my public service beginning when I was getting --

earned income tax credit that year as a single mother.

My son was on Medicaid. I had (phonetic) been 

in public service, making myself through. I was paying my loans 

but they don't count those because I wasn't in this program. I 

was through a FEMA disaster and I needed extra income, so I 

could get out of the disaster.

And I had to get a deference and those months 

that I didn't make payments didn't count. It's just so hard. I 

went through cycle after cycle of review with the public service 

loan forgiveness becoming my fifth.

They don't tell you how long these reviews 

will go. I think right now I'd been waiting over a year. 

Randomly, they give me a month of credit. Oh, here's one that I

heard, I was switching legal services job. I worked for my 

employer until September 27th. My payment was due September 28.

I made my payment on time.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

109

MR. ROBERTS: Thirty seconds.

MS. KIRSCHENHEIDER: But because my payment 

date was one date after I quit on a Saturday, they didn't count 

that month of service and that payment. But if my payment due 

had been -- due date had been due September 26, that month would 

have counted.

And I just want to express my frustration in 

trying to juggle this program and I'm really excited that you 

guys are meeting because I think the program was supposed to 

help us but it really limits our ability to do anything with our 

careers as we wait as I’ll probably were this public service. 

Not that I mind but for the next 20 years.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Ms. Kirschenheider so 

much for your comment. Thank you very much.

MS. KIRSCHENHEIDER: Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: All right. Next up we have Ms. 

Arielle Atherley, representing the Leadership Conference on 

Civil and Human Rights. And we'll give her a moment to get 

online.

Hi, Ms. Atherley, are you -- are you in the 

meeting here with us?

MS. ATHERLEY: I am here.

MR. ROBERTS: Hi, welcome. If you're able 

to turn, it's great (inaudible). 

MS. ATHERLEY: I got to get set up.
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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MR. ROBERTS: We can hear you and you have 

three minutes starting now.

MS. ATHERLEY: Wonderful. Thank you. So, 

thanks so much for having me. My name is Arielle Atherley. I'm a 

Policy Analyst at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human 

Rights in Washington D.C. We are a coalition charged by our 

diverse membership of more than 229 national organizations to 

promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in 

the United States.

The civil rights community has long 

recognized equal, educational opportunity as central to our 

struggles to achieve equality for all Americans. And despite 

some of our nation's most fundamental laws that removed some of 

the barriers to access for students, students for marginalized 

communities continue to be excluded from quality post-secondary 

education based on their race, their status as a justice 

impacted person or their disability status.

Institutions of higher education must ensure 

the rights to an equal educational opportunity for all students 

in America and federal civil rights laws must be enforced. So, 

that campus communities are inclusive of the full diversity of 

students in America.

Without these protections, exclusionary 

policies and practices will result in a lack of equal 

opportunity for some of our most marginalized students. As such,
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we urge the department to consider changes in the number of 

areas including what is outlined below.

Firs on student loan debt cancellation, the 

rising cost of education has kept post-secondary education out 

of reach for many low-income students unless they rely heavily 

on student loans. A choice that black and Latino students are 

disproportionately faced with.

The $1.7 trillion student loan crisis is 

crushing individuals, families and our economy. And the weight 

of this burden is disproportionately borne by women and black 

and Latino borrowers.

A debt financed higher education system and a 

society defined by dramatic racial, gender, disability and 

wealth disparities will always inherently be flawed and 

inequitable.

And though there are established programs 

intended to make student loan repayment manageable, the 

impediments to accessing relief had been well-documented and 

very few borrowers had been successful thus far in obtaining 

relief through repayment programs

The only solution that addresses the harms

of the past is to look towards widespread debt cancellation and 

so we're looking to the department to issue guidance that will 

result in an immediate cancellation of at least $50,000 of 

student debt for borrower which would provide relief to millions
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

112

of borrowers facing the burden of their student loan everyday.

On gainful employment, in the 2018 brief on 

the topic of gainful employment, the civil rights community 

called for a strong gainful employment regulation that protected 

students and curtailed abusive practices by for-profit 

institutions.

Despite various claimsto the contrary forprofit colleges (phonetic) do not serve black and Latino 

community and rather they profit from deep cultural commitments 

to education and students' belief that the Department of 

Education would only make financial made available for 

worthwhile programs.

In the names of these students and their 

families, we urge the department to robustly enforce the laws 

and regulate (inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Two seconds left.

MS. ATHERLEY: On behalf of marginalized 

students.

MR. ROBERTS: Great. Thank you so much for 

your public comments. Next up, coming in from the waiting room 

is Ms. Ashley Pizzuti, who's a for-profit borrower and organizer 

for other borrowers in the Brooks Institute. Ms. Pizzuti, can 

you hear us?

MS. PIZZUTI: Hi everyone.

MR. ROBERTS: Hi, you have three minutes for
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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public comment beginning now.

MS. PIZZUTI: Great. Thank you. Hello, 

everyone. I am Ashley Pizzuti. I first want to thank those who 

are in support of giving my voice a seat at the table. It's 

pretty telling when student loan profiteers still control the 

narrative.

 I'm utterly disappointed that our voice is 

being shut out once again. Jessica Barry, it's pretty obvious to 

everyone watching stuck in the borrower defense pipeline, you 

are not working in good faith but for those who stand to put 

more students in the same situation.

Here's my story in the last decade I'd been 

researching how my husband and I ended up with half of million 

dollars in student loan debt after graduating from Brooks in 

2005. Easy, we were lied to about job prospects, placement, 

graduation rate, accreditation, transfer of credits and you pair 

that with the recession and capitalized interest and there you 

go.

In 2015, I started to reach out to others for 

my school. We're all suffering the same fate. I started to 

collect data on other Brooks' borrowers. Out of 500 borrowers, 

we collectively hold over $70 million, that’s $70 million for 

just under 500 people, all student loan debt. This is one tiny 

CEC owned school out of many.

Like I said before, I applied for borrower 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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defense over five years ago. This is my application. It includes 

administrative and faculty testimony on how my program ran a 

noncompliance as ACICS looked the other way.

 E-mails from the admission's reps, several 

loan investigations and class actions against Brooks and as CEC 

shareholder call transcript, stating dividends would be paid by 

keeping warm bodies in their seats by any means necessary.

Yet, my application was denied under DeVos

for lack of evidence. CEC has been proven to be a bad actor, yet 

here we are still holding the bag. Our lives are permanently on 

hold, controlled by this debt while most of us reached middle 

and retirement age with little options.

 I'm happy to share my data with anyone that's 

interested. Thank you for giving me a chance to speak. I wish it 

was more.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Ms. Pizzuti for your 

public comment. Next up and actually our final public comments 

that we are currently have in the waiting room is Ms. Kecia 

Nicholson, representing herself.

Ms. Nicholson, can you hear us?

MS. NICHOLSON: Yes.

MR. ROBERTS: Hi, good afternoon. You have 

three minutes for public comment, beginning now.

MS. NICHOLSON: Hold on. Can you hear me?

MR. ROBERTS: I can hear you. Yep, you --
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

115

you're --

MS. NICHOLSON: Okay.

MR. ROBERTS: -- just fine.

MS. NICHOLSON: Thank you. Okay. I'm a school 

psychologist in public service and I'd been doing that for 15 

years. I had FFEL undergrad loan and a Direct grad loans that I 

consolidated into an FFEL consolidation piece in 2006. So, I'm 

hopeful that your new guidelines are going to address most of my 

concerns.

But, I do have concerns about do I need to 

show payments because this will be difficult. I already had two 

FOIAs. I closed my bank account that I had paid from that. So, I 

hope that this will be addressed.

Also, if my loans are forgiven, yay, but my 

family budget will not change. My husband still has loans, so 

I'll still fall under that under that marriage penalty as Bobby 

had stated in the past.

Child care, when my child was younger, our 

thing was based on the sliding scale for AGI, that doesn't 

acknowledge student debt. So, even though we would get raises, 

our child care and our student loan payments would also go up.

So, this was also a problem with people who 

have non-traditional like work at night. They rely on family, so 

you don't know how their meetings (phonetic) have pay. So, Joe's 

suggestion of pulling the IRS data might not address that proof. 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

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The loan amount calculated was too high when my husband was in 

deferment.

So, it was saying I could -- and the family 

need to take this much his loans were deferred. So, we need a 

way to calculate when one spouse is in school and paying under a 

loan or when one spouse is in school and the other one is paying 

on their loans.

Marjorie had pointed out like the discrepancy 

of undergrad and grad. From my position, we should have 

undergrad and grad forgiveness. I would echo that and not have 

any differences between the two because for my job I need to 

have a Master's. I needed to have grad school.

Otherwise, I kind of be in that position of 

not really being able to pay my loan necessarily with just the 

Bachelor's. I echo what people had said about needing more 

support. People with loans, they need somebody to understand the 

tax implications like do we have to do, marry (phonetic), file 

separately and we also need people that understand the different 

forgiveness programs because maybe somebody qualifies better for 

a teacher forgiveness versus a public service loan. I think this 

would help address the equity issue too for people.

Also, alumni support , especially -- 

MR. ROBERTS: Thirty seconds.

MS. NICHOLSON: -- for public university. So,

just being able to have that connection and then also people 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

117

with student loans never get to experience any real increase 

when they get any kind of raises () because our cost () of 

living goes up, again our student loans give up -- go up as 

well.

So, thank you for allowing me to be part of 

this today.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you very much for your 

comment and actually hope no one minds if we go a minute over. 

We have our final speaker just entered the waiting room, it's 

Mr. Christopher Loren, representing himself. So, Mr. Loren, can 

you hear me?

MR. LOREN: Yes, I can hear you.

MR. ROBERTS: Good afternoon. The floor is 

yours for three minutes.

MR. LOREN: All right, thank you. So, making 

this pretty brief, I'm definitely glad that this committee is 

the dealing with some of the hard situations that many out there 

are facing. Some of my concerns are however, you know, a little 

bit more broad I guess the department of education I hope is 

considering. My comment would be basically, you know, why is 

enough that you that you can go out and buy a house, you can buy 

a car and you can even get, you know, private loans for things 

that aren't education, pay at least a 50% lower interest rate 

than the federally mandated interest rate that's out there which 

is over 5% for some that have even higher than I’ve heard 7, all 
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the way to 12%. 

You know, federal student loans in order --

are there to help people who can't afford school, made 

(phonetic) out-of-pocket. So they’re able to further their

quality of life by having the opportunity to have a higher 

income through jobs that require higher education.

You know, why is student loan interest 

capitalized driven for four to five years, you know, period of 

while you're in school. You know, if the economy is not healthy, 

there aren't a whole lot of jobs out there to do something could 

be after graduation.

You know, why isn't there a one-year grace 

period where interest is not being capitalized, you know, or 

another issue that I'm concerned with is why aren't student loan 

is something that feeds (phonetic) something coming out of your 

paycheck pretax just like many health benefits too. And I don’t

think, these fundamental flaws that, you know, are aiding in the 

$1.7 trillion with student loan debt. I hope that on top of all 

the issues this committee is discussing that these are problems

being looked at as a part of the solution. Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you very much for your 

public comments. All right, that -- actually we ended right on 

time I think. That concludes day four of week one of negotiated

rulemaking and we will see everyone here tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.

Eastern.
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Appendix

Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education 

Zoom Chat Transcript 

Affordability and Student Loans Committee - Session 1, Day 4, 

Afternoon, October 7, 2021 

 

DISCLAIMER: 

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a 

recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate; in 

some cases, it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible 

passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to 

understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be 

treated as an authoritative record. 

 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

Hi, flagging that John will be taking my spot when we begin 

again. 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

*The disability spot 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/him/his) to Everyone: 

+1 to Jeri's approach above. 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

Thank you Jeri for providing language on the faculty/credit 

hour issue. I agree as well. 

From Will (A) FFEL Agencies Lenders to Everyone: 

As we move forward with expanding eligibility, I would 

encourage ED to be cognizant of overly complex rules and 

processes. The more complex the categories, eligibility 

rules/processes, etc. are, the more exposed this is for 

abuse in the form of entities that may take advantage of 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

121

the borrwers we are trying to help. Just an observation, 

to be considered as we work towards increasing inclusion. 

From Persis (P) Legal Aid (she/her), NCLC to Everyone: 

What topic is after PSLF? 

From Persis (P) Legal Aid (she/her), NCLC to Everyone: 

Josh will take over at arbitration for that topic 

From Raj - Advisor Econ/Higher Ed/Data to Everyone: 

I can look to see what may be available in research 

From Brady - FMCS to Everyone: 

Thanks Raj 

From Suzanne (state regulators) (A) to Everyone: 

suggest "contingent" or "non-tenured" faculty 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

Would also add "non-tenure track" 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/him/his) to Everyone: 

+1 to Suzanne 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

+1 Bobby 

From Suzanne (state regulators) (A) to Everyone: 

+1 Dixie, I used to spend 3hrs/day traveling between 

campuses when I was an adjunct many years ago 

From Raj - Advisor Econ/Higher Ed/Data to Everyone: 

I am back now, was just on the phone with Kayla so missed

the last few minutes 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

122

From Jessica (P) Proprietary Institutions to Everyone: 

+1 Daniel 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

Multiple part time jobs already count as full time 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/him/his) to Everyone: 

Multiple jobs for faculty members. Allowing multiple 

employers to "count" for certification as full time. 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

Quick facts on contingent faculty by the AAUP | 

https://www.aaup.org/issues/contingency/background-facts 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/him/his) to Everyone: 

Thanks Heather. I see that now. Just making sure that the 

multiple employer qualification counts for adjunct 

professors as well... 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

Thank you Raj! Appreciate you! 

From Persis (P) Legal Aid (she/her), NCLC to Everyone: 

Josh will take over for the legal aid seat for this issue 

paper 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

I think all the points about adjuncts are vital examples of 

how the existing employment certification process is 

failing to protect borrowers, in spite of regulatory 

language that should have allowed such borrowers to 

benefit 

From Rachelle - 4 Yr Public (A) to Everyone: 

+1 Heather 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

123

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

For Raj: If you could pull research/data on adjunct 

professors/guest lecturer workload that includes the 

workload of travel times for those who teach at multiple 

campuses as that is a part of their work. (If at all 

possible, include how many adjuncts teach at multiple 

campuses/travel to those campuses) 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

For Raj (part 2 hehe): This is a lot of info to pull but I 

have one more ask. Is there any data on a breakdown of 

racial/ethnic and gender for adjunct professors x student 

loan debt (or is this 2 different sets of data?) 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

+1 I feel you Jeri!!! First gen HS grad and higher ed 

student here. I would and will do anything to continue my 

education. 

From Jennifer she/ella, (A) Student Loan 

Borrowers to Everyone: 

+1! 

From Alyssa (A) Fin Aid Administrators to Everyone: 

If only one school type uses these instruments and it is 

also the school with the most BD claims and other 

complaints isn't that enough to demonstrate that they are 

problematic? 

From David Tandberg to Everyone: 

+1 John 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

Hello, I'm back in the disability seat. Thanks! 

From Jennifer she/ella, (A) Student Loan 

Borrowers to Everyone: 
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124

+1 

From Josh (A), Legal Aid (he/him) to Everyone: 

+1 jeri 

From Misty (P) Priv & Non-Profit to Everyone: 

+1 Jeri 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

Meet students and borrowers where they're at and not where 

you want them to be. 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+ Jeri 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+ David 

From Michaela [P] Ind. Student to Everyone: 

+1 

From Joe (P); State AGs to Everyone: 

Eager to see more on Josh's points 

From Will (A) FFEL Agencies Lenders to Everyone: 

+1 David 

From Josh (A), Legal Aid (he/him) to Everyone: 

+1 Jennifer 

From Persis (P) Legal Aid (she/her), NCLC to Everyone: 

I am back in the legal aid seat 

From Christina, (A) 2-Year Public she/her to Everyone: 
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125

I have concerns about the implicit penalty for earning a 

higher income for those who just minimally exceed the 

income cut off. 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

+1 Christina 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/him/his) to Everyone: 

Is there tax liability on forgiven interest? 

From Persis (P) Legal Aid (she/her), NCLC to Everyone: 

currently forgiven student loans are not taxable until end 

of 2025 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

not through 2025 but yes otherwise 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

principal and interest forgiven were both previously 

taxable as income 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

There are some states with state tax liability, right? But 

most/all states have defenses for low income folks from tax 

liability 

From Bobby (P) Two Year Public Colleges to Everyone: 

Couldn't type it fast enough.... Christina will be sitting 

in 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

insolvency provisions can help low income borrowers 

otherwise subject to taxation, but they are based on assets 

vs. liabilities rather than on income 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 
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126

+1 to Dixie 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

+1 Dixie 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

Great point Dixie. 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

+1 Persis! 

From Justin (P) Service Members and Veterans to Everyone: 

Late with this but for the discussion on Predispute 

Arbitration: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision 

opining on and analyzing the prior definition of Borrower 

Defense under 34 CFR § 685.300(i)(1). Young v. Grand Canyon 

Univ., Inc., 980 F.3d 814, 815 (11th Cir. 2020). 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

I can drop my question for Raj in the chat 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

do you have data on churn? 

From Joe (P); State AGs to Everyone: 

Q for Raj - are there other recognized measures of poverty 

beyond the HHS guidelines? 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

specifically between different income levels? 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

it's a huge problem with Medicaid eligibility caps and 

transitions to the ACA exchanges 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

127

From Jessica (P) Proprietary Institutions to Everyone: 

I need to step away for a moment. My alternate, Carol, is 

taking my place. 

From Joe (P); State AGs to Everyone: 

I support Persis's proposal to discuss defaulted borrowers 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 to Persis 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

+1 Persis 

From Misty (P) Priv & Non-Profit to Everyone: 

+1 to Persis 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

+1 to Persis 

From Joe (P); State AGs to Everyone: 

Our student lending complaints spike during tax season 

based on the issues Persis is identifying 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

+1000000000000000 to Persis 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

The memo were sent around on Monday 

From Jennifer she/ella, (A) Student Loan 

Borrowers to Everyone: 

+1 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/him/his) to Everyone: 
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128

Also couldn't the department include the regs here and 

early adopt them. 

From Josh (A), Legal Aid (he/him) to Everyone: 

+1. Just because we have a large agenda, doesn’t mean these 

borrowers should be left out of the discussion. 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/him/his) to Everyone: 

I agree that the proposal (specifically the issue of IDR as 

a pathway out of default) could be added as a sub issue 

under the current IDR conversation. 

From David Tandberg to Everyone: 

I request that the Department present on what they are 

currently considering doing to address the concerns raised 

by Persis. 

From Raj - Advisor Econ/Higher Ed/Data to Everyone: 

I can quickly discuss the other document I sent and then 

can bow back out 

From Jessica (P) Proprietary Institutions to Everyone: 

My alternate, Carol, is going to continue in our seat after 

break. 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/him/his) to Everyone: 

Raj, question for research: how much of assessed interest 

for students in IDR programs is never actually paid in the 

lifetime of the loan? 

From Jennifer she/ella, (A) Student Loan 

Borrowers to Everyone: 

Raj: Yes, I would like more info on gender 

From Jennifer she/ella, (A) Student Loan 

Borrowers to Everyone: 

+1 Persis 
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129

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

+1 Persis 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

+1 Michaela 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+ Michaela 

From Jennifer she/ella, (A) Student Loan 

Borrowers to Everyone: 

Raj, can you clarify if this information is only based on 

students that graduate and if so do we have info on 

students that do not graduate 

From Jennifer she/ella, (A) Student Loan 

Borrowers to Everyone: 

1+ Marjorie 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+ Marjorie 

From Noelia, Minority Serving Inst. (A) to Everyone: 

1+ Marjorie 

From Jennifer she/ella, (A) Student Loan 

Borrowers to Everyone: 

1+ Persis 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+ Persis 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

+1 Persis 
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130

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

+1 Persis 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

Distinguishing between undergraduate and graduate borrowers 

for making changes to income percentages that must be paid 

is unnecessary and would unfairly penalize students who 

have graduate loans. 

From Suzanne (state regulators) (A) to Everyone: 

+ Marjorie and Persis 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

+100000 Michaela 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

+1 Michaela 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

I'd like to see the math 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

that might address my concern 

From Michaela [P] Ind. Student to Everyone: 

Examples are super helpful 

From Raj - Advisor Econ/Higher Ed/Data to Everyone: 

I am planning to "math out" some scenarios tomorrow and 

even moreso in advance of November. Can you please provide 

specific requests/examples you would like to see? I am 

trying to take notes but may have missed some things 

From Persis (P) Legal Aid (she/her), NCLC to Everyone:
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131

the Affordable Care Act subsidies slide up to 400% of 

poverty 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

+1 Bobby 

From Christina, (A) 2-Year Public she/her to Everyone: 

+ 1 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

1+ Bobby 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

+1 

From Justin (P) Service Members and Veterans to Everyone: 

+1 Bobby 

From Misty (P) Priv & Non-Profit to Everyone: 

+1 Bobby's point 

From Suzanne (state regulators) (A) to Everyone: 

+ 1 bobby, it's also why some borrowers are married filing 

separately on taxes and missing out on tax benefits 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

An important point by Bobby. Also, under most IDR plans, 

married borrowers are permitted to file separate federal 

tax returns to have IDR payments based on separate income 

but that means they lose access to benefits allowed only 

for joint filers such as the student loan interest 

deduction 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 
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132

Jennifer is stepping in for me. 

From Jennifer she/ella, (A) Student Loan 

Borrowers to Everyone: 

Jeri is taking her seat back 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

I am back. 

From Joe (P); State AGs to Everyone: 

+1 consider completion 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 consider completion 

From Rachelle - 4 Yr Public (A) to Everyone: 

+1 Daniel. 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

+1 Daniel 

From Rachelle - 4 Yr Public (A) to Everyone: 

So much more likely to stay in repayment if borrowers can 

see forgiveness as they go 

Catching up on questions in the chat – please let me know 

if I missed anything - Bethany: Churn specifically between 

different income levels? o RD response: Evidence on churn 

certainly exists, though I am not aware of anything on 

these specific income levels. Let me see what else I can 

find - Daniel: how much of assessed interest for students 

in IDR programs is never actually paid in the lifetime of 

the loan? o RD response: I believe the Department would 

need to answer this question using their data - Joe: are 

there other recognized measures of poverty beyond t

From Raj - Advisor Econ/Higher Ed/Data to Everyone: 

he HHS 
Negotiated Rulemaking 10/7/2021

133

guidelines? o RD response: Income is the main measure that 

most government programs use. Researchers have come up with 

a multitude of other ways to measure social welfare and 

poverty, but I have not seen these measures be used at 

scale. I will look further to see what I can find on this 

From Raj - Advisor Econ/Higher Ed/Data to Everyone: 

- Jennifer: Yes, I would like more info on gender o RD 

response: I was not able to see this when presenting so not 

sure which figure to which this was in relation. Happy to 

track things down with more clarity on which figure/data. - 

Jennifer: Raj, can you clarify if this information is only 

based on students that graduate and if so do we have info 

on students that do not graduate o RD response: Again, 

sorry, I am not sure which figure to which this refers. For 

the 4th figure (distribution of income by school), that was 

based on enrollment as of that year. But happy to track 

other knowable information down 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

Daniel's point is important. Eliminating interest 

capitalization is not the same as waiving unpaid accrued 

interest 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/him/his) to Everyone: 

0% interest during period of IDR. Forgive interest that 

accumulates during the year and is unpaid. Forgive a 

portion of the loan as you go. And have a shorter time to 

forgiveness for students with small loan balances. 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

Under the REPAYE plan, during periods of negative 

amortization, 50% of unpaid accrued interest is waived. 

From David Tandberg to Everyone: 

+1 

From Alyssa (A) Fin Aid Administrators to Everyone: 

+1 million to Persis 
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134

From Rachelle - 4 Yr Public (A) to Everyone: 

+1 Persis 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

REPAYE demonstrates ED's authority to waive interest on 

ICR-based plans such as PAYE and REPAYE. 

From Misty (P) Priv & Non-Profit to Everyone: 

My alternate Dr. McTier is stepping in for me 

From David Tandberg to Everyone: 

My alternate, Suzanne is joining to make a comment. 

From David Tandberg to Everyone: 

+1 - Joe 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 to Joe 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 on retroactivity 

From Justin (P) Service Members and Veterans to Everyone: 

+1Persis re retroactivity 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

+1 on retroactivity 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

+1 to Persis - this is me! 

From Joe (P); State AGs to Everyone: 
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135

Paper on IDR uptake and negative amortization: 

https://www.nber.org/papers/w24484 

From David Tandberg to Everyone: 

Thanks, Joe 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

A borrower owing $30,000 at 6% must pay $150 in interest 

each month in order to avoiding owing more the he did 

before making the payments. 

From Joe (P); State AGs to Everyone: 

+1 Suzanne - negative amortization does have a chilling 

effect on IDR uptake 

From Justin (P) Service Members and Veterans to Everyone: 

+1 to Suzanne on program structure discouraging borrower 

participation/public service. 

From Suzanne (state regulators) (A) to Everyone: 

:) 

From David Tandberg to Everyone: 

Yes, to Suzanne! 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

+1 Suzanne! 

I will just add to Joe's comment that there is a large 

amount of literature that indicates that students do not 

fully understand their student loan debt obligations, have 

difficulty navigating repayment plans, and that the 

structure of messages matter as do "default" plans. I will 

also note that the paper Joe posted that shows that the 

messaging of IDR matters was done on a sample of students 

who should be relatively well suited to understand their 

From Raj - Advisor Econ/Higher Ed/Data to Everyone: 
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136

future prospects (at a flagship university, a lot of 

engineering and econ majors), yet they made many 

"mistakes" 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Suzanne 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

Jennifer in for me 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/him/his) to Everyone: 

+1 to Persis on default and allowing them access to IDR and 

allowing that to be count as rehabilitation and 

cancellation. 

From Joe (P); State AGs to Everyone: 

Agree with Raj that students do not understand their 

student loan debt. We have a student loan helpline in our 

office. A consistent theme in the calls we receive is that 

borrowers do not understand the basics of their student 

loans. They often do not know whether they are federal or 

private. They often not know whether they are in 

delinquency or default. Would love to have Raj get a 

sampling of that research for the Department to consider. 

From Raj - Advisor Econ/Higher Ed/Data to Everyone: 

Joe -- I will put together a summary of the research 

literature on this topic 

From Joe (P); State AGs to Everyone: 

+1 Bethany on auto-enrollment in IDR when delinquency hits 

a certain point 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

+1 Persis and +1 Bethany 
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From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

+1 Bethany auto-enrollment 

From Jessica (P) Proprietary Institutions to Everyone: 

+1 Persis and +1 Bethany 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

Automatic enrollment with an opt-out option seems to make 

more sense. 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Michaela 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

+1 Michaela! 

From Jessica (P) Proprietary Institutions to Everyone: 

I am subbing back in. Thanks, Carol! 

From Persis (P) Legal Aid (she/her), NCLC to Everyone: 

1000% Michaela 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to Everyone: 

+1 Michaela 

From Marjorie (P), 4 Yr Institutions (she/her) to Everyone: 

Or those who are dual caretakers-children under 18 and 

caring for parents or older relatives 

From Jeri (P) (she/her), Student Loan Borrowers, 

Primary to Everyone: 

I am back, thank you Jennifer. 

From Dr. McTier (A) Priv. & Non-Profit to Everyone: 
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138

Misty is subbing back in. 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 servicing in house 

From David Tandberg to Everyone: 

+1 to Joe 

From Raj - Advisor Econ/Higher Ed/Data to Everyone: 

The research suggests that the meetings with financial aid 

professionals and campus counselors can be quite helpful, 

but not enough borrowers seek these services, including 

many who might need a lot of support 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

Support this proposal!