In that environment, states, beginning with Connecticut in 2015, started enacting legislation requiring servicers to abide by certain consumer protections. That effort has picked up over the past several months as borrower advocates grow increasingly concerned that Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education will do little to protect borrowers from mistreatment at the hands of servicers. “We’re just seeing servicers putting their bottom line over the concerns of students and borrowers and their families,” said Whitney Barkley-Denney, the legislative policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit that works to curb harmful lending practices. “There’s clearly been a breakdown somewhere in federal oversight and the folks who are charged with overseeing the servicers at a federal level haven’t done a good job.”
