Trump’s education secretary overrides department findings on defrauded student borrowers: report

AlterNet logoAlthough the Trump Administration has had a high turnover since 2017, one of the people who has remained is Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Trump’s education secretary, from 2017 to late 2019, has had more than her share of critics; some of them include college students, and a December 11 report by Cory Turner for NPR describes DeVos’ battle with recipients of student loans who say there were defrauded.

Turner reports, “These borrowers — more than 200,000 of them — say some for-profit colleges lied to them about their job prospects and the transferability of credits. They argue they were defrauded and that the Education Department should erase their federal student loan debt under a rule called ‘borrower defense.’”

DeVos, however, disagrees with the students, asserting that they did receive at least some value from their educations and that they deserve partial relief for their student loans but not total relief. And she is not swayed by some newly released memos from 2017 .

Continue reading

Betsy DeVos to the rescue: For-profit colleges see a savior in secretary

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has systematically dismantled an Obama-era crackdown on for-profit colleges. Credit: Matt Rourke, AP

The rejection letter was harsh.

Page after page, an accrediting agency ticked off all the problems at Virginia College, a large chain of for-profit schools with dwindling enrollment. There would be no seal of approval, the accreditor declared, no imprimatur necessary to participate in the federal student loan program that is the lifeblood of most colleges and universities.

But it turned out that Virginia College — and other for-profit schools — had a friend in high places.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has led a rescue squad for the nation’s for-profit colleges. Step by step, she has dismantled an Obama-era crackdown on the industry, and she plans to deliver a set of regulations next year that many expect to again boost the industry.

View the complete November 23 Laura Meckler on The Washington Post website here.

DeVos Ends Obama-Era Safeguards Aimed at Abuses by For-Profit Colleges Image

The following article by Erica L. Green was posted on the New York Times website August 10, 2018:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos scrapped a regulation that would have forced for-profit colleges to prove that the students they enroll are able to attain decent-paying jobs. Credit: Michael Reynolds, EPA, via Shutterstock

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos formally moved Friday to scrap a regulation that would have forced for-profit colleges to prove that the students they enroll are able to attain decent-paying jobs, the most drastic in a series of policy shifts that will free the scandal-scarred, for-profit sector from safeguards put in effect during the Obama era.

In a written announcement posted on its website, the Education Department laid out its plans to eliminate the so-called gainful employment rule, which sought to hold for-profit and career college programs accountable for graduating students with poor job prospects and overwhelming debt. The Obama-era rule would have revoked federal funding and access to financial aid for poor-performing schools. Continue reading “DeVos Ends Obama-Era Safeguards Aimed at Abuses by For-Profit Colleges Image”