The U.S. Department of Education’s Administration of Student Loan Debt and Repayment

We found that the Department did not have a comprehensive plan or strategy to prevent student loan default, and thus could not ensure various Department offices’ efforts were coordinated and consistent. We also found that the roles and responsibilities of the offices and personnel tasked with preventing defaults or managing key default-related activities and performance measures to assess the effectiveness of the various default prevention activities were not well-defined. Further, we found that FSA’s Portfolio Performance Management Services group—the group responsible for analyzing the Federal student loan portfolio—had access to extensive loan and borrower information but had not used the information to identify trends or make recommendations for improvements or enhancements to the Department’s current default prevention activities. We also found that the servicing contracts that FSA executed with the Title IV Additional Servicers (TIVAS) in June 2009 did not explicitly establish minimum required default prevention activities that TIVAS must perform for borrowers with delinquent Department-held loans.