The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Kathy Kraninger may have been blasted for her bureau’s poor oversight of predatory student loan servicers, but her latest effort to fix the “lousy system” has gone awry for a reason beyond her control: The Department of Education’s alleged obstruction of oversight.

According to a letter obtained by NPR, the Trump administration appointee wrote to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that the CFPB was trying to police the student loan system overseeing $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt but was unable to do its job because the Department of Education (DoE) — which is “the largest participant in the student lending market” — had “declined to produce information” that the agency needed.

This episode “certainly gives the appearance that the Education Department is trying to block the CFPB from scrutinizing loan servicers,” Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration Paul Reville told Yahoo Finance.

“Trump's Education Department has been very friendly to servicers in a variety of ways while the Administration has been simultaneously undermining the CFPB generally,” Reville added. “This latest spat seems to be consistent with the Administration's bias toward the interests of servicers over the interests of students.”

"It's actually quite remarkable," Seth Frotman, executive director of the nonprofit Student Borrower Protection Center, told NPR. "The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is telling the world that the Secretary of Education has put in place a series of policies that are obstructing federal law enforcement officials from standing up for the millions of Americans with student debt."

Lawmakers, led by Warren, also placed the blame on Devos and the DoE:

“The Department, under Secretary [Betsy] DeVos, has removed a key weapon from CFPB's arsenal to fight illegal behavior and mistreatment of borrowers by student loan servicers, and that federal student loan servicers, who are paid by the federal government, are ignoring federal regulators' request for information,” Warren, Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) wrote in response to Kraninger’s letter.

Student loan servicers ‘declined to produce information’ directed by the Department of Education

Around 18% of the population has held student loans as of 2016, up from 10% in 2004.

The percentage of student loans transitioning to delinquency — driven by borrowers unable to meet repayment deadlines — has also been rising over the years, with rates now at 9.54% in the first quarter of 2019.