AFT President Randi Weingarten Applauds ED’s Removal of 1 Million Borrowers from MOHELA’s Rolls

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the US Department of Education announced it would remove more than 1 million federal student loan borrowers’ accounts from beleaguered loan servicer MOHELA’s portfolio:

“MOHELA got greedy. It recklessly took on more accounts than it could handle to boost its profits and instead found itself in a mess of its own making. It fits the pattern of incompetence and deception that we saw in The MOHELA Papers. Rather than trying to support borrowers, MOHELA stifled them, running a ‘call deflection’ scheme to divert thousands away from live help and into dead-ends on dysfunctional websites.

“The Biden administration has acted again and again to help borrowers, taking on servicers such as MOHELA and issuing new rules that would cancel student debt for 30 million people, with over $150 billion relieved so far. Secretary Cardona is listening, and acting, to fix the structural rot in the student loan system that he inherited from Betsy DeVos. It’s working—and this latest step proves that servicer misconduct is no match for an administration dedicated to standing side-by-side with borrowers, not the corporate giants that prey on them.”