Why Public Service Loan Forgiveness Is So Unforgiving
On the morning of Monday, Aug. 27, Seth Frotman told his two young daughters that he would likely be home early that day and could take them to the playground. They cheered.
He did not tell them why their dad, who often worked long hours as the student loan watchdog at the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, would be free for an afternoon play date.
Frotman assumed that after walking into his office and, at precisely 9:30 a.m., hitting "send" on an incendiary resignation letter to lawmakers accusing the Trump administration of betraying student borrowers, he would promptly be walked out with his things, and his career, in a cardboard box.
"Unfortunately, under your leadership," Frotman wrote to his boss, Mick Mulvaney, "the Bureau has abandoned the very consumers it is tasked by Congress with protecting. Instead, you have used the Bureau to serve the wishes of the most powerful financial companies in America."
Frotman arrived at this conclusion, in part, after he and his team reviewed thousands of borrower complaints the previous summer. One program kept coming up, hurting and infuriating the very people it was meant to help: the U.S. government's effort to reward student borrowers for public service — for being nurses, teachers and first responders.
This is the story of Seth Frotman, the mangling of the program known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and what it says about America's student loan industry.
The middlemen
Congress created (PSLF) in 2007, in the waning
