Mr. Rudert, who graduated from law school owing nearly $135,000 on student loans, said he would have picked a different employer if he had known<br />that his work at Vietnam Veterans of America would not qualify.<br />Mr. Rudert submitted the certification form in 2012 and received a letter from FedLoan affirming<br />that his work as a lawyer at Vietnam Veterans of America, a nonprofit aid group, qualified him for the forgiveness program.<br />Only certain types of federal loans qualify, meaning<br />that many borrowers need to restructure their debt to make it eligible — and the Education Department has done little to clarify gray areas, Ms. Abrams said.<br />In a legal filing submitted last week, the Education Department suggested<br />that borrowers could not rely on the program’s administrator to say accurately whether they qualify for debt forgiveness.<br />“We don’t know how this will pan out.”<br />Linda Klein, president of the American Bar Association, called the department’s response “illogical, untenable<br />and bewildering.” An unreliable certification system “exposes those undertaking public service work — exactly what Congress intended them to do — to crippling financial risk,” she said.
