About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

GAO-18-587R 1 (2018-07-27)

handle is hein.gao/gaobacpny0001 and id is 1 raw text is: G A U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 July 27, 2018 The Honorable Robert C. Bobby Scott Ranking Member Committee on Education and the Workforce House of Representatives The Honorable Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. House of Representatives The Honorable Emanuel Cleaver, II House of Representatives Federal Student Loans: Further Actions Needed to Implement Recommendations on Oversight of Loan Servicers Federal student loans play a key role in ensuring access to higher education for millions of students each year. Nearly 43 million borrowers held almost $1.4 trillion in federal student loans as of December 2017, which were primarily provided through Education's William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan) program. Education relies on contracted loan servicers to help manage its Direct Loan portfolio. These servicers process payments, provide borrowers with information on repayment plans, and carry out other responsibilities. We issued a report and a testimony over the last 3 years examining weaknesses in Education's management and oversight of these servicers.1 We found deficiencies in Education's guidance to servicers, oversight of servicer call centers, complaint tracking, and performance metrics. As a result, we made six recommendations to Education. You asked us to provide an update on Education's oversight of student loan servicers. This report examines the status of Education's efforts to implement our prior recommendations for improving oversight of federal student loan servicers. To address this issue, we reviewed Education documentation on the actions it has taken to implement our prior recommendations, reviewed its recent solicitation of proposals for a new student loan servicer system, and interviewed agency officials. We conducted this performance audit from April 2018 to July 2018 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 1GAO, Federal Student Loans: Education Could Improve Direct Loan Program Customer Service and Oversight, GAO-1 6-523 (Washington, D.C.: May 16, 2016); and Federal Student Loans: Key Weaknesses Limit Education's Management of Contractors, GAO-i 6-196T (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 18, 2015). GAO-18-587R Student Loan Servicers Page 1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most