The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau responded to Ms. DeVos’s memo with a pointed note saying<br />that borrowers “should be able to repay their debt without having to deal with illegal loan servicing practices.”<br />If the department does go forward with a single portal, Ms. DeVos’s memo seems to<br />improve Navient’s shot at winning the bid, according to procurement experts.<br />Under the Obama administration, the Education Department was on the verge of selecting a single vendor to build a new system<br />for servicing its student loans, in what was expected to be one of the largest federal contracts outside of the military.<br />But critics of Ms. DeVos’s move this week are especially concerned about a particular piece of guidance from the Obama administration she struck down:<br />that the Education Department should place great weight on a company’s track record when selecting student loan vendors, and should steer away from companies with histories of shoddy service or other problems.<br />DeVos Halts Obama-Era Plan to Revamp Student Loan Management -<br />By STACY COWLEY and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERGAPRIL 14, 2017<br />With the stroke of a pen this week, Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s new education secretary, thrust<br />the future of the government’s system for managing federal student loans into confusion.<br />Last April, the Education Department opened bidding to find a vendor to build<br />that system, and the winner would get a chance to construct the most visible government portal since HealthCare.gov.
