{"id":54864,"date":"2020-03-25T17:12:25","date_gmt":"2020-03-25T22:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=54864"},"modified":"2020-03-25T17:12:26","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T22:12:26","slug":"u-s-officials-temporarily-halt-default-student-loan-debt-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=54864","title":{"rendered":"U.S. officials temporarily halt default student loan debt collection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Eric Stirgus <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Tribune News Service<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>U.S. Department of Education officials announced Wednesday a 60-day suspension of collection actions and wage garnishments against default student loan borrowers to provide additional assistance to those borrowers amid the coronavirus pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Additionally, private collection agencies have been instructed to halt all collection activities, including making phone calls to borrowers and issuing collection letters and billing statements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are currently more than 5 million borrowers in default on a federal or private student loan, according to some 2019 government estimates. The suspension is retroactive to March 13. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;These are difficult times for many Americans, and we don&#8217;t want to do anything that will make it harder for them to make ends meet or create additional stress,&#8221; U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in a statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About 57% of Georgians who have recently earned college degrees have student loan debt, according to a 2019 report by the Institute for College Access and Success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The average student loan debt is approximately $29,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Trump administration has made several changes since declaring a national emergency to the virus to help borrowers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They include allowing borrowers with federally held student loans to suspend their payments for the next two months and all interest waived on federal student loans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Eric Stirgus Tribune News Service U.S. Department of Education officials announced Wednesday a 60-day suspension of collection actions and wage garnishments against default student&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,13675,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-area-news","category-coronavirus","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/US-NEWS-CORONAVIRUS-STUDENTLOANS-DMT.jpg?fit=2738%2C1825&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54866,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54864\/revisions\/54866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}