Frotman, an attorney, previously worked on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and was deputy chief of staff for former Representative Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania. Prior to his work on federal policy, he served as counsel for the New Jersey State Senate, where he worked on consumer protection legislation.
“Politics has infiltrated everything,” Frotman said of the current U.S. administration. With Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos dismantling Obama-era policies that protected student loan borrowers, he said, the outlook for students is worsening.Spokespeople for the CFPB and Department of Education didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Tuesday, DeVos spoke at the Education Department’s annual Federal Student Aid training conference in Atlanta. She called the federal student aid program a “looming crisis in higher education” and blamed rising debt on the Obama administration. “If we, as a country, do not make important policy changes in the way we distribute, administer and manage federal student loans, the program on which so many students rely will be in serious jeopardy,” she said.
Frotman’s Student Borrower Protection Center, which is based in Washington, won’t have the enforcement power of the CFPB, of course. Instead, it will seek to publicize the cost of debt and delinquency on communities across the country, he said. The nonprofit has established partnerships with New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs, the San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment and the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, as well as the University of California’s Irvine School of Law.
Frotman said his goal is to create policy and litigation strategies to tackle the crisis from the outside. Currently, he has three full-time employees and 10 people in his fellowship program, which will organize professionals working in related fields to produce research surrounding the debt crisis. The SBPB has received financial support from the Sandler Foundation, among others.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.