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DeVos Takes Next Step Toward Eliminating Loan Forgiveness for Defrauded Students
Betsy DeVos is at it again, using her time as the head of the Department of Education to harm students, teachers, and our education system while protecting the corporate interests she's beholden to. It's the one thing she's sort of good at.
The existing program, called Borrower Defense to Repayment, provides relief to federal student loan borrowers who attended a school that misled them or engaged in other misconduct in violation of certain laws.
The rules were introduced in 2016 in response to several high-profile cases in which for-profit institutions — including Corinthian Colleges, DeVry and ITT Tech — committed widespread fraud by lying about job placement rates and used other deceptive tactics to lure students into enrolling.
DeVos, Trump, and friends would like it eliminated.
DeVos convened a special committee to rewrite the policy in June, saying the regulations are "overly burdensome and confusing" ....the Trump administration is one step closer to making it more difficult for students to have loan debt wiped clean in cases involving fraud by universities.
Their draft proposal, obtained by Politico in January 2018, includes the following:
....places a higher burden of proof on students seeking to obtain debt forgiveness and requires applicants to individually present evidence that their college's deception was intentional.....
1) ....applicants would have to establish "clear and convincing evidence" of their fraud claim. This is a change from the standard set under President Barack Obama, which required only a "preponderance of evidence."
2) ....borrowers must "demonstrate that the college's misrepresentation to them was intentional – or at least reflected 'a reckless disregard for the truth'."
3) ....must prove that the misrepresentation led to monetary damage.
4) ....reduction in the time allotted to file a claim, from six years to three years "of the date the borrower discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the misrepresentation."
While this gets worked out to the detriment of students and their future, DeVos has put everything on hold.
A Department of Education official told members of Congress in July that the Trump administration had not approved any applications for student-loan forgiveness and that it had stopped reviews of any new claims since the start of the administration.... the moratorium on reviewing new applications would remain until a new system to adjudicate pending claims had been developed.
In June [2017], NPR reported that attorneys general from 18 states and Washington, D.C., filed suit against DeVos and her department, accusing DeVos of breaking federal law and giving free rein to for-profit colleges by rescinding the borrower defense rule. The rule had been put on hold less than one month after DeVos said her agency would re-evaluate it.