COVID-19
Student Loan Payment Suspension
The office of Federal Student Aid is currently providing the following relief on ED-held federal student loans:
- Suspend required monthly loan payments
- Stop collections on defaulted loans
- Temporarily set interest rates to 0%
On March 27, 2020 Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), which provided for the above relief measures through Sept. 30, 2020. It has been extended multiple times.
On Dec. 22, 2021, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) extended the student loan payment pause through May 02, 2022.
Additional information can be found here:
COVID-19 Resources for Schools, Students and Families
Default Management Impacts
Pantheon has suspended delinquency assistance for our clients for the duration of the loan payment freeze. We intend to restart service whenever the pause is lifted. The Department of Ed and loan servicers will be contacting all borrowers ahead of time to inform them when payments will resume.
SCHOOL DEFAULT RATES ARE NOT AT RISK: No required monthly payments means no possibility of delinquency which means no potential to default.
DRAFT 2019 Cohort Default Rates
On February 28, 2022 the Department of Education released FY2019 DRAFT 3-year Cohort Default Rates for all eligible schools. The 2019 cohort consists of borrowers who entered repayment on Direct Stafford loans during FY2019 (between 01Oct2018 and 30Sept2019). Any of these borrowers who defaulted before 30Sept2021 will contribute to their school’s 3-year CDR.
DRAFT rates are only available to the school or its third party servicer. The corresponding FY2019 OFFICIAL rates will be released to the public in September 2022. Official rates from prior cohorts are available to the public and can be found here by searching for OPE-ID or school name.
Additional information on the release can be found in this announcement:
Department of Education DRAFT 2019 CDR Announcement
Retrieving your Rate
All schools enrolled in the Electronic Cohort Default Rate (eCDR) process will automatically receive their Cohort Default Rates and accompanying documentation via their Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) mailbox. Your cohort default rate is found on the first page of the Cover Letter.
Note: We encourage any school not already signed up for the eCDR process to do so by completing the enrollment form on the SAIG Enrollment Web site.
Any school not enrolled in the eCDR process may view their Cohort Default Rates from the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) via the NSLDS Professional Access Web site. They may also manually request the accompanying documentation (aka Loan Record Detail Reports). Instructions for requesting and retrieving LRDRs can be found here.
Pantheon requests/retrieves data, letters and reports related to all CDRs for our clients via NSLDS as it becomes available.
Again: We strongly encourage any school not already signed up for the eCDR process to do so by completing the enrollment process on the SAIG Enrollment Web site. If you are unsure of your enrollment status, click here.
CDR Guide
On November 22, 2011, the Department of Education released an updated version of the Cohort Default Rate Guide. The new guide incorporates changes for the transition to the 3-year default period and includes information on electronic cohort default rate (eCDR) appeals.
Click the links below for the official announcement and PDF versions of the guide.
announcement:
http://ifap.ed.gov/eannouncements/112211CohortDefaultRateGuideUpdate.html
guide:
https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/guide/attachments/CDRMasterFile.pdf