Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Swindled students get partial loan relief
DeVos says approach works for taxpayers
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is granting partial loan forgiveness to the majority of students approved for help because of fraud by for-profit colleges, according to preliminary Education Department data.
Under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ new policy of tiered relief, students swindled by for-profit schools are compensated based on their earnings after the program.
Of the roughly 16,000 fraud claims approved by the Education Department under DeVos, slightly more than 1,000 students received full forgiveness on their loans, according to an AP analysis of the data.
DeVos has been pushing to ease rules for the for-profit sector and raise the bar for students seeking relief for fraud.
Critics say DeVos is favoring industry interests. But DeVos counters that the previous approach was unfair to taxpayers who ended up paying for those forgiven loans. She contends the new process will enable students to get their claims considered more quickly and efficiently and will be more balanced instead of an “all-or-nothing” approach.
More than 165,000 claims have been filed since the loan forgiveness program launched in full in 2015 under the Obama administration. A total of nearly 48,000 claims have been approved through the end of June.
Since DeVos took over, the agency has reviewed more than 25,000 claims.
The statistics were collected over the summer for a report on loan relief claims that the agency must submit to Congress.
More than 9,000 loan forgiveness claims have been denied under DeVos, according to the data.
Preston Cooper, an analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the tiered system reflected DeVos’ attempt to strike a balance between protecting the interests of students and taxpayers.
“This partial forgiveness operation, it’s not perfect. It’s hard to come up with a perfect solution,” Cooper said. “I would say the administration is pursuing partial relief and they are trying to find one way to negotiate this balance.”