Ashley Harrington, a policy counsel with the Center for Responsible Lending, served as a member of the negotiated rulemaking committee and said in a statement that the proposed rule "reads more like a roadmap for institutions seeking to abuse students and avoid accountability and transparency rather than a plan to protect students and taxpayers."
"Under this rule, [ED] goes further than any proposal discussed at negotiated rulemaking, proposing that relief be limited to borrowers in default in addition to very limited access to relief," she said. "A better solution to this growing financial burden would be preventing as many defaults as possible and holding institutions to a higher standard. Millions of consumers and billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake. Early and effective intervention would spare borrowers the multiple ramifications of loan default, particularly to their credit scores and resulting higher costs for future credit."