Betsy DeVos' New Proposal Aligns Her With For-Profit Colleges Over Debt-Saddled Students
WASHINGTON — The Department of Education, led by Republican über-donor and grizzly-bear alarmist Betsy DeVos, has unveiled a new proposal that would make it dramatically harder for tens of thousands of students who attended scammy for-profit colleges to receive debt relief.
On Wednesday morning, the department released its plan to weaken the so-called “borrower defense” rule. Borrower defense was enacted in the waning days of the Obama administration as a way for students to seek help if they had taken on debt to attend a college or university — typically a for-profit institution — that was later shut down for fraud. Under Obama, students of shuttered schools like ITT Tech and Corinthian College could apply for relief from the Education Department, which would either help individuals get their money back or transfer their credits to another higher-ed institution.
After Trump’s election and DeVos’ arrival as education secretary, the for-profit college industry set out to neuter borrower defense as well as a handful of other policies put in place by the previous administration. The industry had inside help: DeVos is a vocal supporter of privatizing various aspects of American education, and she has hired a slew of for-profit industry alums to work in her agency, including a former executive at a for-profit college who was tasked with working on the department’s watered-down version of borrower defense.
The new rule — which would apply to students seeking loans after July 1st, 2019 — makes it “next to impossible,” in the analysis of Century Foundation senior fellow Bob Shireman, for deceived students to get relief for the debt they took on to attend these shady schools. It could potentially require students to provide reams of evidence in the form of emails, phone call notes and other communications that prove the institution had knowingly misled them — documents students might not have access to in the normal course of going to college. (The Obama version said students were eligible only if they could show they’d attended a school that was later accused of wrongdoing.) The new measure suggests limiting the students eligible to apply for relief to only those who have defaulted on their loans, excluding those in debt but still making their payments. And it proposes further limiting the window of time when a student can apply for relief.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/betsy-devos-borrower-defense-703541/
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