Today, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos got sued.
Since taking over the Department of Education, DeVos has rolled back important protections for students while siding with predatory companies that have a record of scamming borrowers. Most recently, she delayed an update to a rule that lets students pursue cancellation of their federal student loans if their school broke the law. That’s why eighteen states and the District of Columbia, as well as Public Citizen and the Project on Predatory Lending at Harvard Law School have all filed lawsuits against Secretary DeVos today.
In the meantime, the Education Department is moving ahead with its ill-conceived plan to turn higher education into a Wild West. DeVos and the Trump Administration have taken aim at two rules that hold schools accountable for cheating their students: the Gainful Employment and Borrower Defense rules. And this is all happening while defrauded students and veterans are still waiting on the loan forgiveness owed to them by law following the collapse of scam schools like ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges, Inc.
But the public has a real opportunity from now until July 12th to weigh in. Secretary DeVos and the Department of Education are required to solicit public comment before they begin the process of delaying and dismantling these important rules, and you can weigh in!
You can submit your own comment to Secretary Betsy DeVos at this link. Here are some suggestions of things you can tell the Department:
- Urge the Department to get relief to the tens of thousands of students whose schools broke the law, but are still waiting for their loans to be cancelled.
- Ask the Department to stop giving federal loans and grants to schools that do not equip their graduates to succeed in their careers. Taxpayer-backed loan money shouldn’t be used to turn for-profit college executives into millionaires, even as they scam students.
- Tell the Department it is a total waste of taxpayer money to re-do rules that were thoroughly debated during the Obama Administration. The borrower defense and gainful employment rules work to ensure that taxpayers aren’t subsidizing schools that bury their students in debt for a useless degree, and should be enforced, not delayed and dismantled.
Want to do even more? You can sign up to speak for five minutes at one of the two public hearings, which are both 9am — 4pm:
- July 10, 2017, at the U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Ave. SW., Barnard Auditorium, Washington, DC 20202.
- July 12, 2017, at Southern Methodist University, Underwood Law Library-Walsh Classroom, 6550 Hillcrest Ave., Dallas, TX 75275.
From the Department:
Individuals who would like to present comments at the public hearings must register by sending an email to negreghearing@ed.gov. The email should include the name of the presenter along with the public hearing at which the individual would like to speak, the general topic(s) the individual would like to address, and a general timeframe during which the individual would like to speak.
We hope that you’ll take this chance to speak up.
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