DeVos calls for another delay of rule to protect students from predatory colleges
DeVos calls for another delay of rule to protect students from predatory colleges
By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel October 24 at 10:09 AM
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is proposing another delay of an Obama-era overhaul of rules to erase the federal student debt of borrowers defrauded by colleges.
In a Federal Register notice published Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education invited public comment on a plan that would give the agency until July 1, 2019, to implement updates to a regulation known as borrower defense to repayment. The rule, which dates to the 1990s, wipes away federal loans for students whose colleges used illegal or deceptive tactics to get them to borrow money to attend.
The Obama administration revised the regulation last year to simplify the claims process and shift more of the cost of discharging loans onto schools. Those changes were slated to take effect in July, but DeVos suspended them for a year and said she would convene a new rulemaking committee to rewrite the regulation entirely. To give that committee more time, the secretary now wants to further postpone the revisions.
This is another illegal delay by Secretary DeVos to allow predatory for-profit colleges to cheat students and taxpayers, said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D), who is leading 19 state attorneys general in suing DeVos over the delays to the new borrower defense rule. Our office will fight these unlawful attempts by the Department of Education to abuse vulnerable students and families who are drowning in unaffordable debt.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/10/24/devos-calls-for-another-delay-of-rule-to-protect-students-from-predatory-colleges/