Past Events
2/21/2020
9:00:00 AM to 5:00:00 PM
UCI School of Law
The UCI Law Student Loan Law Initiative (SLLI), UC Irvine Law Review, and the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) are honored to host the first law review symposium and volume dedicated to the defining consumer law question of our time: student loan law.
This all-day symposium brings together key consumer protection academics and student loan practitioners from across the country to discuss how we got where we are and to set the agenda for where to go from here.
Papers from the symposium will be published in the UC Irvine Law Review.
This event is approved for 6.75 hours of Minimum Continuing Legal Education Credit by the
State Bar of California. UCI Law is a State Bar-approved provider.
About SLLI
SLLI is a first-of-its kind collaboration between scholars and advocates to bring an end to the student debt crisis by creating a new foundation of legal scholarship that works for borrowers.
The Initiative is a partnership between the University of California, Irvine and the Student Borrower Protection Center. SLLI offers an unprecedented opportunity to support and foster high-quality academic research that can help us better understand the student loan crisis and find a path forward. We bring together scholars, researchers, and practitioners to tackle the problem of student loans with a strategic and coordinated approach.
10/4/2019
UCI School of Law
On October 4th, 2019, SLLI convened leading legal scholars, student loan experts, and practitioners from across the country to share their work and shape the future of student loan research and litigation.
The colloquium, hosted at UCI Law, facilitated discussion between participants on key topics including the problematic state of the servicing industry, the role of the states in overseeing the student loan market, and theories of federal preemption. Participants also examined harmful practices from student loan servicing failures to predation by for-profit schools and debt relief scams. Such practices can collectively add billions of dollars of additional student debt to household balance sheets.
This work comes at a critical time. As presenters noted throughout the day, the student loan market is at a crisis point. The volume of student loan debt continues to grow, now surpassing $1.6 trillion. This debt is held by over 44 million borrowers, nine million of whom are currently in default, with three million more currently behind on their payments. Those borrowers who are not behind or in default are feeling the repercussions of the debt across their financial lives, as it impacts their ability to buy a home, save for retirement, or start a business.
As Seth Frotman, Executive Director of the Student Borrower Protection Center said in his opening remarks, more than 1,000 borrowers defaulted on their student loans during the course of the day’s discussion. Available data also increasingly demonstrates that the economic burden of student loans has a devastating and disproportionate impact on borrowers of color, contributing to the racial wealth gap and income inequality.
SLLI will build on this fall colloquium with a symposium hosted in conjunction with the UC Irvine Law Review in February 2020. The ideas discussed at the event will also be taken by practitioners back to statehouses and courtrooms across the country with the goal of advancing policymaking and litigation to support borrowers. As UCI Law Dean L. Song Richardson noted at the colloquium, “Legal scholarship in this area is sorely needed. It can help courts understand where the doctrine is and where it should go. It can help advocates make the case for reform. And in shining a light on these issues, it broadens the conversation about what legislative reform might look like.”
California State Assembly Select Committee on Student Debt Informational Hearing & Student Loan Debt Workshop
5/17/2019
10:00:00 AM to 2:00:00 PM
401 E. Peltason Drive, Suite 1000, Irvine, CA 92697-8000
California State Assembly Select Committee on Student Debt Informational Hearing hosted by Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris in association with NextGen California, Consumer Law Clinic at UCI and the Associated Students of the University of California, Irvine (ASUCI)
10 a.m.-12:30 p.m., EDU 1121
Free Student Loan Debt Workshop hosted by Student Debt Crisis and NextGen Policy
12:30 p..m.-2 p.m., EDU 1111
Presented in partnership with UCI Law's Student Loan Law Initiative
3/12/2019
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000
Student loan debt in the United States currently exceeds $1.5 trillion. Join us in discussing the current state of student borrower protection laws and the efforts of key advocates in preventing the next
Panelists:
Mike Pierce, Student Borrower Protection Center
Delilah Vinzon, Federal Trade Commission
Barney Eskandari, California Department of Justice
Dalié Jiménez, UCI Law
Stacey Tutt, UCI Law, Moderator