Investigation by ProPublica and the Center for Public Integrity has found that the process of discharging the loans of disabled borrowers is broken.
Scott Creighton of Tampa, Fla., is having his Social Security disability checks garnished by the Education Department to pay down his debt on student loans. Seriously disabled borrowers are entitled to get federal student loans forgiven, but the program for deciding whether they qualify is opaque, dysfunctional and redundant. (Brian Blanco/ProPublica)
By Sasha Chavkin, Cezary Podkul, Jeannette Neumann, and Ben Protess, ProPublica
This article is a collaboration among ProPublica and the Center for Public Integrity, which are independent nonprofit investigative newsrooms; and the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, at Columbia University.
It was co-published with the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Tina Brooks can’t sit or stand for more than half an hour before the pain in her lower back becomes intolerable. She suffers severe headaches and memory loss, and she has lost most of the vision in her left eye. Five doctors and a judge from the Social Security Administration have all determined that she is fully disabled and unable to work.
A former police officer and mother of two, Brooks fractured a vertebra in her back, damaged three others in her neck, and suffered a concussion when she fell 15 feet down a steep rock quarry while training for bicycle patrol.
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