The U.S. Education Department will press forward with a "secret shopper" program to help ensure that companies properly service student loans as millions of borrowers begin repaying debt that had been put on hold during the pandemic. "As we're bringing folks back onto repayment, we need to make sure that the servicers are doing it well, and that they're responsive to the needs of the borrowers and when they're not, we're going to hold them accountable," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told the Reuters NEXT conference. Under the so-called secret shopper program, Cardona said, the Education Department will send its employees to go through the loan process as if they are borrowers.