Under pressure from an online petition, Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest private student-loan provider, will stop charging a $50 quarterly fee to unemployed borrowers who’ve asked for forbearance, reports the New York Times.
The “good faith deposit” now will be credited to the borrower’s account.
Stef Gray, 23, a New Yorker who owes $600 a month on four loans, saw it as a predatory effort to squeeze blood from a generation of turnips — graduates already buried under a mountain of student debt. In November, she started a petition, “Tell Sallie Mae: Stop the Unemployment Penalty,” with Change.org., a group based in San Francisco.
“Sallie Mae is preying on people like me and cashing in on the fact that we need more time to find work before we can repay our student loans,” it said.
Despite working while in college, Gray borrowed $40,000 to earn a bachelor’s and master’s degree in geography. With interest, she now owes more than $65,000. Despite her expertise in geographic information systems, she’s been unable to find a job analyzing census or health statistics.
Orphaned as a child, she didn’t understand the difference between federal and private loans when she borrowed, she said.
