Whitney Barkley-Denney ‌

Whitney Barkley Denney Dec2016

Deputy Director of State Policy & Senior Policy Counsel

Debt Collection & Settlement Student Loans Payday and Other Small Dollar Loans

Whitney Barkley-Denney is a deputy director of state policy and a senior policy counsel, based in Durham, NC. She works with state legislatures, attorneys general, and governors to fight predatory lending, exploitative student loan practices, and unscrupulous debt collectors.

Prior to CRL, Whitney worked on a range of election law issues as director of the Michigan Election Law Project and field director for Election Protection 2008, coordinating law students and attorneys to monitor polls for election irregularities during the 2008 presidential campaign. Whitney clerked for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, serving in the Voter Protection Division, working to enforce the 1964 Voting Rights Act. She accepted a fellowship from Equal Justice Works/AmeriCorps to do foreclosure assistance work with the Mississippi Center for Justice, developing legal and policy expertise in foreclosure, consumer lending, and for-profit colleges. In 2013 and 2014, Whitney was appointed to the US Department of Education's Federal Rulemaking Committee on Gainful Employment and Programmatic Integrity, helping to set federal financial policy for students.

Whitney attended The College of Charleston, in Charleston (SC), and graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, being named 2009 Woman Law Student of the Year by the National Women Lawyers Association. When she's not at work, Whitney enjoys theater.

Research & Policy

Waiving Criminal Court Fees Prevents Harms of Civil Debt

Many people involved in the criminal legal system live on the economic margins. Most defendants are unable to hire their own lawyer due to indigency. In North Carolina, the average person in prison doesn’t have a high school diploma. The cost of involvement in the criminal legal system can quickly add up to thousands of dollars, but the people expected to pay these costs often don’t have the financial resources to do so. Debt that results from this involvement can be difficult or impossible for them to pay off. North Carolina law provides a number of ways for court officials to attempt to...
Research
Consumer Finance

System Reboot: Challenges & Opportunities at the State Level for Higher Education During COVID-19 & Beyond

The COVID-19 crisis has profound financial impacts on families across the country and on the economy overall. With businesses shuttered (including 40% of Black businesses) and record-breaking unemployment claims filed since March 2020, it is hard to overstate the financial instability and hardship this global pandemic has produced. And it will only get worse. The federal government’s response to the COVID-19 global pandemic has failed to meet the needs of Americans who are forced to choose between staying healthy and working in essential, often low-paying, jobs. Even as the recovery lags, the...
Policy & Legislation
Student Loans

Stepping Up: States Move to Hold Student Loan Servicers Accountable

Download a table of state student loan servicing laws from the report. (Updated September 2022) Today, 44 million Americans are saddled with student loan debt. They currently owe over $1.5 trillion—an amount which has more than doubled over the last decade. The causes of this exploding debt burden are many: increasing tuition, stagnant wages, the shifting role of federal government in student lending, divestment from higher education, and the growth in predatory for-profit colleges. Poor servicing practices, particularly placing borrowers in consecutive forbearances instead of appropriate...
Research
Student Loans

A Bitter Pill: Gainful Employment and Credentialism in Healthcare Support Fields

The marketing of for-profit colleges is ubiquitous, yet student outcomes are consistently poor. These outcomes include high dropout rates, low and unstable earnings of graduates, and heavy debt burdens that students are unable to repay, often resulting in default and ruined credit. The reliance of for-profit colleges on federal student aid dollars compounds these harms and fuels these poor student results. Over the last decade, for-profit colleges have been subject to numerous investigations in the media and at both state and federal levels for fraudulent financial aid programs, predatory...
Research
Student Loans

Strong Support for Allowing Former ITT Students to Access the Guaranty Fund

The Center for Responsible Lending strongly supports allowing former ITT students access to the Guaranty Fund. Over the past few years, CRL has been engaged in research and policy regarding for-profit institutions of higher education. During the 2016 legislative session, the Center for Responsible Lending submitted written testimony in support of SB 427, An Act Concerning Higher Education – Institutions of Postsecondary Education – Consumer Protect Provisions. Effective in a few short days, this bill provides critical front-end protections to Maryland students by ensuring that state students...
Comment Letter
Student Loans

Loopholes in the Department of Educations' Proposed Rule on State Authorization of Postsecondary Distance Education Programs

We are encouraged that the Department's proposal would generally require all providers of distance education to obtain state authorization in each state where they intend to enroll students. However, we have concerns that distance education students could still be subject to weaker protections under the proposed rule, for the following reasons: The proposal would permit state authorization through the use of interstate reciprocity agreements that could restrict a state's authority to protect its own students and students' ability to protect themselves The proposal would permit providers to...
Comment Letter
Student Loans

NC Student Loan Calculus: What North Carolina Can Do to Ensure All of Its Students Receive an Affordable, Quality College Education

The topic of student loan debt is increasingly gaining public attention. Too often, assumptions about debt are made that hide the real contours of the problem. For example, simply citing aggregated student loan debt loads at a state or national level suggests that every student loan borrower is the same– with identical financial backgrounds, borrowing to attend similar institutions, and facing the same issues with repayment. Even a preliminary examination of the issue indicates that this is not the case. For example, middle class graduate students, gaining degrees in a STEM field, are facing...
Research
Student Loans

Debt Buyer Lawsuits Expected to Drain Over $7 Million from Mainers, including $1.4 Million through Wage Garnishment

Debt buyers purchase old debts from creditors for pennies on the dollar and then hire debt collectors or attorneys to force consumers to pay up, often by suing them in court. Recent enforcement actions by state and federal regulators show widespread abuse and improper lawsuits brought to try to collect the old debt. Abuses include things like robo-signing affidavits in support of collection lawsuits and illegally suing residents for time-barred debt.
Policy & Legislation
Debt Collection & Settlement