Department of Education to Cancel $150 million in Student Loans

CNN, Thursday: The Department of Education will implement a rule known as the Borrower Defense to Repayment created during President Obama’s Administration and blocked by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in 2016. The rule or regulation grants federal loan forgiveness automatically for students who could not complete their education due to the schools shutting down before their education was completed while they were enrolled. Unfortunately students are not eligible if they moved to another school to complete their education. The later part sounds ridiculous to me as a fraud is a fraud regardless of where you end up. Anyway, it is a partial victory for a minority of students caught up in the bad student loan environment. Given the magnitude of the issue, more than 1,400 schools closed between 2013 and 2015 stranding many students with excessive loans and an incomplete education by for-profit schools. 15,000 former students are impacted by the court’s ruling and mandate to complete the forgiveness process.

The Michigan Queen of For-Profit Charter Schools who also draws on the local taxes to pay for the unaudited costs of the schools blocked this rule when she took office giving For-Profit so called colleges and mostly bankrupt a chance to challenge (why?) the ruling. 18 states and the District of Columbia took exception to Betsy and the Department of Education blocking the relief to students defrauded by colleges. The Judge ruled in October against the Department of Education, Betsy, and the For-Profit College industry. In December, The Department of Education decided to begin the debt cancellation process and not appeal. The cancellation will take 30 to 90 days to complete or 3 -6 months over all from October 2018? How quick they move.

Meanwhile Ms. DeVos through a spokesperson says: “she ‘respects the role of the court’ but still believes that many provisions in the Obama rule are ‘bad policy.’ The department will continue the work of finalizing a new rule that protects both borrowers and taxpayers.”

Ms. DeVos is promoting a new rule which would proportion the amount of education received from the school against the cost of a completed education and also compare it to earnings of those who completed their education. She conveniently forgets, no completion, no earnings at that level acquired from a complete education. Her comment justifying such actions moves from talking of “saving taxpayers money” to talking of “saving the government money.” Anything to pay down the deficit created by this administration.

Another hypocrisy, bankruptcy protection for business, Trump, and individuals but little or no protection for students.