During the Obama administration, the number of people defaulting on their student loans grew astronomically. According to Bloomberg, the number was somewhere in the vicinity of 8.7 million people, which roughly translates to someone defaulting every 29 seconds. So what did President Obama do? He put in place policy memos that directed the Federal Student Aid Office to shift its focus, spend less time on debt collection, and help borrowers find ways to manage debt with repayment plans and other techniques.

That sounds great, right? The government treating the people it lent money to as people and not accounts to be paid. Who could have a problem with that? Why, Betsy DeVos, of course. Everyone's favorite underqualified secretary of education wants no part of such things. In order to cut costs, DeVos has decided that she's going to throw Obama's plans out the window and, as is becoming a theme with this administration, she has no replacement plan ready to go.

Our mission in the student loan servicing procurement process is to provide high quality customer service to federal loan borrowers in a cost-efficient and effective manner. I write today to reiterate the importance of the task ahead and reaffirm the Department’s commitment to achieving its mission. Unfortunately, this process has been subjected to a myriad of moving deadlines, changing requirements and a lack of consistent objectives. We now find ourselves in a situation where we must promptly address not only these shortcomings but also any other issues that may impede our ability to ensure borrowers do not experience deficiencies in service.

The Trump White House Is Struggling to Pull Off the Annual Easter Egg Roll And the details are delicious.

The key word there is "cost-efficient." The rest is doublespeak. You can't just say the Obama plan didn't have "consistent objectives." It did. If you read the two memos, there is a very clear objective. Namely, "simplifying the repayment process, better protecting borrowers, and facilitating our oversight of servicing contractors." That's pretty damn consistent. The shorter version? Obama's plan was built to make repaying loans easier.

What do people who work in this area think of this decision?