Thursday, August 02, 2007

The NY Times today writes about this new report from the US Government Accountability Office that takes the Department of Education to task for its ongoing failure to make sure lenders and schools are playing by the rules with student loans. The report says that DoE has handed down exactly two penalties in the past 20 years, which is truly pathetic given the number of abuses and improprieties revealed since the scandal began making headlines earlier this year. The report finds that DoE had no standard protocol for oversight, and that when the office was made aware of "improper inducements or limitations on borrower choice," it would perhaps go so far as to send a letter to the college requesting that it change its behavior -- and of course would not follow up to see if it had.