Nation’s Top Official Overseeing Student Loans Resigns, Drags Trump Administration
By: Kayla Pasacreta
Seth Frotman, photo via Associated Press
eth Frotman, the federal official responsible for protecting student borrowers, announced his resignation on Monday. Frotman directly cited the Trump Administration for his departure, expressing his own concerns that the Trump White House does not have the best interest of student loan borrowers at heart.
“Since 2011, the CFPB has handled more than 60,000 student loan complaints and, through its investigations and enforcement actions, returned more than $750 million to aggrieved borrowers. Frotman’s office was central to those efforts. It also played a role in lawsuits against for-profit giants ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges and the student loan company, Navient.
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Frotman’s role as Student Loan Ombusdman for the Consumer Financial Protections Bureau (CFPB)started in 2010 after the financial crisis, and resulted in returning over $750 million to harmed student loan borrowers.
Frotman’s departure is the department’s second high-level resignation since the hiring of Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney, who took charge of CPFB in November and leased the bureau in revising or removing many Obama-era regulations, lessening enforcement to prevent predatory lending, and ultimately downgrading Frotman’s role to protect student borrowers. Frotman cited Mulvaney in his letter, “The damage you have done to the Bureau betrays these families and sacrifices the financial futures of millions of Americans in communities across the country,"
