By Chelsey Tierney
My first student loan, which I took out in 2012 at just seventeen years old, turns thirteen this year. For thirteen years I have carried this student loan. It has followed me through three different schools; a variety of internships, jobs, and cities; and more than one student loan processor. In all that time my loan has moved in and out of repayment, deferments, and forbearances without issue.
Until it was transferred to MOHELA.
The Higher Education Loan Authority of Missouri (MOHELA) began administering my loan in 2023. You may remember them as the organization that sued the Biden administration for trying to forgive student loans; however, I know them as a bureaucratic nightmare. At first, the transition seemed like it would be uneventful. I had the same expectations I’d developed with my previous servicers: clear billing statements, accurate payment postings, and transparent communication. And for a while, it was. In October of 2023, the state aid organization announced that they would be transitioning to a new platform hosted by StudentAid.gov. During this transition, accounts were placed into an administrative forbearance. I was able to access the new platform in July of 2024.
Three months after MOHELA began processing my student loan payments, they took two auto-payments from my account in one month and posted neither. When I began to look into my payment history, it became apparent that my complete payment history — everything prior to the platform transition — was gone. I had no records of ten years’ worth of student loan payments and no way to verify the accuracy of my loan balance. I also noticed a $0 line item in my account history (the oldest item) labeled “capitalized interest”. Upon expanding it, I discovered that interest had been added to my principal after the administrative forbearance that MOHELA had unilaterally placed me on. Seven months later, I’m still trying to untangle the additional problems that have surfaced. Since taking over my loans, MOHELA has withdrawn unauthorized payments without posting them, capitalized interest without notice or reason, and consistently provided incorrect and often late bills. And since January, MOHELA has not billed me at all for my highest-interest loan and offered no explanation for the decision.
Trying to reach them is a dead end. MOHELA’s messaging portal allows me to send online messages, but offers no option to respond to their answers. Calling is equally futile. I experienced long hold times, multiple transfers, and when I finally spoke to someone I was placed on a series of continuous holds for almost an hour before being given a case number and told someone would follow up with me. No one ever did.
It wasn’t until I filed a complaint through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that I finally received some assistance. After making the CFPB complaint, MOHELA posted the missing payments and provided a full account history, though they claimed they were still “looking into” the interest capitalization. I eventually filed another complaint with the CFPB, but this one was closed shortly after, with more vague assurances from MOHELA, but no concrete action. That was in December 2024.
