Know Before You Owe Federal Student Loan Act of 2017

Summary

Know Before You Owe Federal Student Loan Act of 2017 This bill amends title IV (Student Assistance) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to expand lender disclosure requirements. A lender must provide a quarterly statement to a Federal Family Education Loan or Direct Loan borrower during a period when loan payments are not required. Such statement must include the current loan balance, original principal loan amount, interest rate, total interest paid, aggregate payments, the lender's or servicer's contact information, accumulated interest amount, and information about making payments while a student to offset interest accrual. It must also explain the option to pay accrued interest before it capitalizes and suggest a payment amount based on interest charged. Additionally, the legislation modifies loan counseling requirements for an institution of higher education (IHE) that participates in federal student aid programs. Currently, an IHE must provide one-time entrance counseling to a student who is a first-time federal student loan borrower. This bill requires an IHE to provide pre-loan counseling to a student borrower of a federal student loan at or prior to the first disbursement of each new loan. It revises and expands required elements of pre-loan counseling to include a borrower's estimated debt-to-income ratio at graduation, a statement to borrow the minimum necessary amount, a warning that high debt-to-income ratio makes repayment more difficult, options to reduce borrowing, and an explanation of the importance of on-time graduation. Prior to certifying a Federal Direct Loan disbursement to a student, an IHE must ensure that such student manually enters the exact dollar amount of the loan.

This text is taken from the official record. PoliticalRepo does not editorialize.

Timeline

No timeline events have been ingested for this record yet.

Votes

No vote records are attached yet.

Versions

No version snapshots stored. Document URLs remain at the source.

Documents

3 official files

• Introduced in Senate (text)

  Introduced in Senate · EN · 25 July 2017

  ViewDownloadOpen at official source

• Introduced in Senate (PDF)

  Introduced in Senate · EN · 25 July 2017

  ViewDownloadOpen at official source

• Introduced in Senate

  summary · EN · 25 July 2017

  Open at official source

Sponsors

No sponsors or actors listed by the source.

Related records

No cross-record relationships stored yet.