"The state loan authorities would report anybody who had defaulted on loans to all the licensing entities around the state," he says. Weeden adds that tying student loans to licenses, which often have to be renewed every couple of years, created a process to find people when they defaulted. "Because states were essentially the direct lenders to students, many states had large loan portfolios," he says. So Funk wrote a bill ending the state's right to revoke professional or driver's licenses because of student loan defaults.ĭustin Weeden, a policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures, says a lot of states passed license revocation laws for student loan defaulters in the 1990s and early 2000s, back before the federal government started taking on a bigger role in lending to students. "There isn't public transportation, or very little," Funk says. If the goal is to get people to make loan payments, taking away their ability to drive to work just makes it harder for them to make money, especially in rural states. Not to mention, she says, counterproductive. Moffie Funk learned that that was a potential consequence, she says she felt embarrassed. That's putting a lot of people's livelihoods at risk.īut Montana, where Lindley lives, is rolling those sanctions back. The percentage of Americans defaulting on their student loans has more than doubled since 2003. In 22 states, defaulters can have the professional licenses they need to do their jobs suspended or revoked if they fall behind in their student loan payments, licenses for things like nursing or engineering. But had she defaulted longer, the state of Montana could have revoked her driver's license. That was motivation enough for Lindley to figure out ways to make her payments. "There was a time where I defaulted on my student loans enough that I never was sent to collections, but just long enough to, honestly, ruin my credit." "Removing my driver's license, you just created one more barrier for me being a productive citizen in my community."įresh out of school, Lindley says there were times when she had to decide whether to pay rent, buy food or make her student loan payments. This mean-spirited and extremely punitive measure, directed, as it is, at the most vulnerable sections of our population - the low income, the young, and the perennially harassed communities of color, particularly black women - prompted a writer for the US News and World Report to poignantly ask, ‘If people are unable to work… how can they be expected to pay their debt?’” ![]() For instance, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulations couldn’t determine how much student loan debt has been recovered. In spite of the extreme punitive nature of these laws and the zeal with which they were enforced, they proved to be quite ineffective. A new state law aims to stop this vicious cycle of debt and loss of employment, and BRIDGE/MSW Pathways Co-Director Claudio Martinez urges the Senate to pass the law in a recent op-ed to help address the student loan crisis.Įxcerpt from, “ Pass the Professional License Bill to Save Student-Loan Debt Holders ” by Claudio Martinez, originally published in Boston Business Journal: Currently, Massachusetts is one of many states that can deny, revoke, or refuse to renew any license if the holder defaults on a student loan.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |