Watchdog Agency Scales Back Student Loan Report

The Trump administration made dramatic cuts to an annual report on federal and private student loans produced by a consumer watchdog agency compared to an unpublished version obtained by POLITICO.

The report, released last week by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, found that student loan companies have become less responsive to complaints from borrowers compared to the previous year. But former CFPB employees raised alarm over key sections about pathways out of default, loan cancellation options and tuition price-fixing being cut from what agency staff ended up publishing.

Originally 36 pages, the published version is 15 pages shorter, far shorter than previous annual reports that ran anywhere from 35 to 100 pages long — even during the first Trump administration. The removed details included what options borrowers have to pay back their loans or have them canceled.

The final report was released at a time when the administration is cracking down on student loan debt even as both Republicans and Democrats campaign more heavily on the cost of housing, food and other everyday expenses.

“Congress made the CFPB to protect Americans’ wallets, and the Trump administration has instead chosen chaos, and to hide the truth about a ballooning student debt crisis and billionaire-backed corruption that is crushing working people," Julia Barnard, the author of the early version of the report, said in a statement.

Barnard, who started working at CFPB in early 2022 and has since left the agency, said many of the sections omitted from her original report were about protections available to borrowers.

The agency itself has been a target of the Trump administration, which has tried to significantly shrink it through reductions in force — a move being blocked by a federal judge while a legal challenge plays out.

The level of changes to this year’s report seem to go far beyond the agency’s standard editing process, said Mike Pierce, who served as the senior adviser to the student loan ombudsman at CFPB from 2011-2018.

“I can't ever think of a set of circumstances or something quite like this [that] happened in my seven years at the Bureau, and the seven-plus years since,” said Pierce, who is now executive director of Protect Borrowers, a nonprofit group that advocates for debt relief. “This really does seem like political interference with a report that's required under federal law.”

CFPB, however, said the report that was initially submitted was not in the scope of what was required by the federal law that established the agency after the 2008 financial crisis.

“I’m not surprised this manifesto, not within the scope of Dodd-Frank by a disgruntled, incompetent employee who quit after it was pointed out to her that she wrote a screed that did not address any of the statutory requirements for the report, would be given to Politico,” a CFPB spokesperson said in statement.

The spokesperson said it shows how “out of control” the agency was under the Biden administration.

The earlier version of this year’s report contained information regarding student loan defaults, and options available to borrowers that don’t require repayment or allow for a pause in repaying student loans. For instance, in cases where there is a school closure or identity theft, a borrower could have their loans canceled. The earlier report also said borrowers can pause forced collections by showing that these actions would create a financial hardship.

The Education Department also began the process of garnishing wages of federal student loan borrowers, with the first batch of notices going out earlier this month. Roughly 5 million borrowers were in default at the end of 2025, according to Federal Student Aid data.

There was also a section on the ability for students to have their private loans canceled when there is school misconduct.

A section on college pricing was also eliminated from the earlier version of the report. Many schools contract pricing decisions for individual students out to enrollment management companies who use algorithms containing variables such as website visits, ZIP codes and other metrics to determine how much a family might be willing to pay. This is an issue several Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have been tracking over concerns about potential collusion between colleges.

There was also a chart where the number of complaints was broken out by the company servicing the loan, which was also omitted in the final published version.

Barnard said she fears it will only become more challenging for borrowers to pay off their student debt.

“We all know student loans are incredibly confusing for most borrowers and debtors and it’s likely that this administration is going to make it more difficult for many of them to achieve the results they want to repay or resolve their loans,” she said in an interview.