A recent study found Navient, an American corporation that manages student loans, had the most complaints filed against them with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2018.
LendEDU, a website that helps consumers learn about financial products, conducted the study. It revealed which companies received the most complaints and what kind of complaints were filed the most.
“The complaints don’t really have direct repercussions. It’s more of a slap on the wrist,” Mike Brown, who helped publish the study, said. “But it gives students an important insight into the companies they’re using.”
The company with the second-highest numbers received less than half the complaints Navient did. Brown said even when he adjusted the numbers based on company size, Navient still came out on top.
The most common complaint was “dealing with the lender or servicer.” This could mean anything from difficulty getting in touch with a representative to being treated unfairly, Brown said.
Navient is facing lawsuits from several states and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau itself. A lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro alleges Navient forced its borrowers toward unnecessarily expensive repayment programs in violation of state law.
Navient did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In total, the report showed 8,340 complaints were filed across 10 companies. Brown said the process of filing a complaint is fairly easy, but this number may not represent everyone who wanted to file one.
Of those complaints, 64 percent were about federal student loans, and 36 percent were about private loans.
Federal student loans are funded by the government. Private student loans are usually funded by banks or credit lenders, so the interest rates are different depending on the lender, according to the LendEDU website.
This can mean that private loans might have higher interest rates, Brown said, but not necessarily.
During the 2017-2018 school year, IU students shouldered $524 million in student loans, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education and the university.
While many IU students are dealing with loans, James Kennedy, associate vice president of University Student Services and Systems, said the university is working to reduce the amount of money students borrow.
The overall student loan volume at IU fell by $13.6 million in the 2017-2018 school year compared to the year before.
“We’ve done a lot of work on reducing student loan debt,” Kennedy said.
One way to help students deal with loan debt is to teach them financial literacy while in college, he said.
This is the main goal for Phil Schuman, IU director of financial literacy. For many students, he said, learning financial literacy means learning how to deal with student loan debt.
“We want you to get rid of it as fast as humanly possible,” he said. “With student loan debt, you’re paying for your past, and we want you to fund your present and your future.”
Schuman said he sees a lot of students worried about student loans, no matter how much debt they have.
“We all understand this is an incredibly complicated thing, even more complicated than it should be,” he said. “We don’t want anyone to feel embarrassed to ask for help.”
