Federal Student Aid’s Suspension of Involuntary Collection in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic
Inspection / Evaluation · Department of Education OIG · 2021-06-15 · about Department of Education
Report
Title
Federal Student Aid’s Suspension of Involuntary Collection in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic
Submitting OIG
Department of Education OIG
Component agency
Department of Education
Type
Inspection / Evaluation
Publication date
2021-06-15
Summary
The objective of our review was to evaluate the results of Federal Student Aid’s (FSA) process for suspending involuntary collection and refunding payments involuntarily collected on defaulted Department-held loans in response to the Coronavirus pandemic.We found that FSA suspended administrative wage garnishments and the U.S. Department of Treasury (Treasury) offsets for over 96 percent of the borrowers that FSA collected payments for within 90 days of March 13, 2020, the start of the suspension period.
Recommendations (3)
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Status
Text
1
Closed
We recommend that FSA’s Chief Operating Officer determine if wage withholding has ceased for the 1,930 borrowers whose employers continued to withhold wages as of October 23, 2020, despite FSA's cancellation of the administrative wage garnishment…
2
Closed
We recommend that FSA’s Chief Operating Officer adopt the best practice of regularly querying its database to proactively identify payments reposted to borrowers’ loans due to refunds returned to Treasury, broken compromise agreements, and payments…
3
Closed
We recommend that FSA’s Chief Operating Officer develop and implement procedures to obtain information about and track Justice’s progress on suspending and refunding payments involuntarily collected during the suspension period on Department-held…