Jillian Berman

1 day ago | marketwatch.com | Jillian Berman

The Education Department is putting pressure on Columbia’s accreditor, whose seal of approval the school needs to get federal grants and loansPublished: June 5, 2025 at 11:59 a.m. ETThe Trump administration sent a letter to Columbia University’s accreditor saying the school was in violation of its standards.

3 days ago | marketwatch.com | Jillian Berman

The Education Department won’t target the Social Security payments of defaulted student-loan borrowers for now, but is still moving forward to offset tax refunds and pursue wage garnishmentsPublished: June 3, 2025 at 3:26 p.m. ETU.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said earlier this year that her agency would restart student-debt collection for defaulted borrowers.

4 days ago | teenvogue.com | Jillian Berman

One article in Pennsylvania newspaper, the Lancaster New Era, told the story of a woman in Ohio who got rid of her $4,100 in student debt by filing for bankruptcy. Ultimately, she found a job that would have paid her enough to repay the loan. A major source for that story was the executive director of a state-backed organization that worked for the government as a middleman in the student loan program.

4 days ago | yahoo.com | Jillian Berman

ROBYN BECKBy the time Patricia Gary contacted a lawyer to help her deal with her student loans, she’d paid $23,000 towards them and still owed $3,882. That was the case even though she only borrowed $6,000 in the first place. What prompted the call was a notice in 2019 that the government planned to take some of her Social Security check in order to repay the debt. Gary needed that money to afford food and medications, so she raced to figure out how to stop the feds from taking it.

3 weeks ago | marketwatch.com | Jillian Berman

The Trump administration is reversing a Biden-era policy that would have protected a larger portion of monthly checks for some defaulted student-loan borrowersPublished: May 13, 2025 at 9:41 a.m. ETThe Education Department under Secretary of Education Linda McMahon restarted debt collection on defaulted student loans in May after a roughly five-year pause.