After years of struggling to make payments that hardly put a dent in the loans she took out to attend a now defunct arts school, Victoria Linssen saw a glimmer of hope. A deal last month between 39 states and Navient, a student lending giant accused of unfairly ensnaring borrowers like her, would wipe away $1.7 billion in private student loans.Then she read the fine print: People like her who made their payments on time were disqualified from the relief.Even though prosecutors said Navient had made predatory loans to hundreds of thousands of borrowers it knew couldn’t afford them, the settlement covered only about 66,000 who were in default. Those who managed to make the payments on their deceptive, high-interest debt — mostly to attend for-profit schools that left them …
