Reading & replying to a wide world of messages in my various Inboxes today, I happened across the following information, which I received from the Student Loan Justice group on Facebook:
Our New York State Lead…discovered, and confirmed very recently that a company contracted by the Department of Education to provide staffing for its Ombudsman office, Vangent (formerly NCO Pearsons), is also functioning as a student loan debt collector. In other words, when you call the Office of the Ombudsman seeking impartial support for concerns about your student loans, the staff assigned to handle your case may well work for this company. This is a clear conflict of interest implemented under the previous administration, but in full view of many current ED staff, and constitutes and a clear breach of the public trust. Preliminary research indicates that at least three members of the Ombudsman staff were brought over directly from the default collection unit at Vangent, but much is still not known. This issue cries out for further investigation, and has yet been reported in the press…Until the breadth and depth of this breach of trust is known more fully, and appropriate corrective measures are implemented, contacting the Ombudsman Office for service is not advised.
As an overwhelmingly fucked student debtor, this is something I will look into very closely over the next few days. My hope is to draft a story about it for my Huffington Post blog by Tuesday. To this end, if you have any info about the DOE that might be useful, or if you have a perspective/story about your student loan experience that you think needs to be told, feel free to contact me at holla@mnrqz.com. On this issue, I am happy to accommodate a sources’ anonymity.
