Navigating Debt Relief for FFELP Borrowers 2023 | Student Borrower Protection Center | 22 February 2023 | Webinar

This event s a nonprofit organization focused on alleviating the burden of student debt for millions of Americans. This engages in advocacy, policymaking, and litigation strategy to rein in industry abuses, protect borrowers’ rights, and advance economic opportunity for the next generation of students.

For these borrowers, and the countless others who are making their payments but barely getting by, these are “kitchen table” financial issues that affect every aspect of their lives. From buying a home to choosing a career, from starting a family to saving for retirement, student debt casts a shadow that many Americans cannot escape. And yet the most alarming consequences of the student debt crisis happen not at the individual level, but where student debt begins to affect all of us—shaping our economy and society.
Mounting evidence shows that the ripple effects of student debt are substantial. The country is just beginning to see how this debt fuels economic, gender, and racial inequality, inhibits asset accumulation, accelerates wealth gaps, and carves out a generational divide that, even in the best of circumstances, will take decades to erase.

To add insult to injury, the $1.7 trillion student loan market sits largely unregulated and plagued with predatory actors. Student loan borrowers are being ripped off from the day they receive their first bill, to the day they pay off their loans. They struggle while billion-dollar companies profit by exploiting their financial distress. The companies dominating this market are private lenders, debt collectors, and student loan servicers driving borrowers into delinquency and default—hurting millions of borrowers at every single point of their financial lives.

When borrowers default, it is often as a direct result of widespread illegal practices by student loan servicers. These companies have spent decades—and billions of dollars—lobbying for every advantage. Then, they use the full weight of the government to wreak havoc on borrowers. Single parents with student debt have their wages garnished, leaving them struggling to afford even basics like medicine and diapers for their kids. Senior citizens have their Social Security payments seized, driving them into poverty. Teachers and nurses have their licenses revoked, causing them to lose their jobs and any means to keep a roof over their heads.

This is leading a nationwide effort to end the student debt crisis by empowering policymakers and advocates to take action. Together, we can fight these abusive practices and work to protect the 45 million Americans with student debt.

This is reining in industry abuses and advancing reforms across the student loan market through aggressive advocacy, innovative research, and creative litigation strategy. Led by the team of former federal regulators that directed oversight of the student loan market at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, SBPC works to protect borrowers’ rights and advance economic opportunity for the next generation of students.

Our team combines deep subject matter expertise developed in and out of government with decades of senior-level policymaking and regulatory experience. Together, we are tackling the student debt crisis and expanding protections for student loan borrowers.

2023 Speakers

Chuck Bell
Programs Director
Consumers Union

Eileen Connor
Director
Project on Predatory Student Lending

Lisa Donner
Executive Director
Americans for Financial Reform

Richard Dubois
Executive Director
National Consumer Law Center

Merf Ehman
Executive Director, Columbia Legal Services

Ben Elga
Executive Director, Justice Catalyst

Austin Evers
Executive Director, American Oversight

Sen. Eric Lesser
Senator, Massachusetts

Kristin McGuire
Executive Director, Young Invincibles

Ted Mermin
Co-founder & Executive Director , Public Good Law Center , Executive Director , Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice

Patrick Murphy
Former Under Secretary of the United States Army, Former U.S. Congressman (PA-8)

Ted Mermin
Co-founder & Executive Director , Public Good Law Center , Executive Director , Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice

Holly Petraeus
Former Assistant Director, Office for Servicemember Affairs, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

John Podesta
Founder & Board Member, Center for American Progress

Ed Mierzwinski
Senior Director, Public Interest Research Group

Charley Olena
Associate Director of State Affairs, Secure Democracy

Angela Peoples
Co-Founder, The South

Hon. Sarah Bloom Raskin
Former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Former Governor, Federal Reserve Board

Nick Rathod
Former Assistant Director, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Former Special Assistant to, President Obama

Ellen Rosenblum
Attorney General, State of Oregon

Beverly Brown Ruggia
Financial Justice Organizer, New Jersey Citizen Action

Randi Weingarten
President, American Federation of Teachers