State must relieve foster youth, veterans from unrighteous debt
Former students at the disgraced and closed Corinthian Colleges in California have been left with little or none of the education they paid for but with tremendous debt. They are disproportionately veterans and former foster youth — two groups warranting our respect and attention. Both groups are eligible for public grants and loans that drive aggressive recruiting by certain predatory private for-profit schools, which then impose their own private debt on these students.
Regrettably, Gov. Jerry Brown this fall vetoed AB 573 (Medina), a unanimously passed bill that would have provided a modest helping hand to these debt-saddled students to mitigate the difficult futures they now face.
The overall picture of abuse by for-profit schools includes promising the moon while spending millions on their CEO salaries, lobbying and profit and little on instruction. Few graduate, fewer still pass licensing exams. But millions of students have been affected, and some schools’ misleading ads still air nightly on our mass media.
To her credit, Attorney General Kamala Harris has gone after one of the culprits, the Corinthian colleges, ending their exploitation. But the now-stranded students face a possible lifetime of ruined credit, given the special status of education loans. This will affect their ability to get jobs, obtain a mortgage and rent an apartment.
There have been recent measures to streamline “loan discharges” for some students. But students are in widely disparate legal situations, depending on who the creditor is, when the loan was taken, whether in default and other variables. Realistically, most need legal help from an expert who can navigate the complexity and go to court if necessary to get the discharge. That is what the Legislature tried to provide, inexpensively and through legal aid.
Brown had a special burden here. He was the attorney general in 2007 when he settled litigation with Corinthian, al- lowing abuses to continue and accepting false promises.
Then when advocates proposed reforms to the regulator in charge, he rejected a board subject to transparency rules and insisted on a “bureau” with a single person operating at his pleasure. That bureau did not stop the abuse, and Corinthian was able to escape its jurisdiction.
I and others proposed AB 573 to at least restore up to two years of Cal Grant and National Guard Education Assistance awards for students who were unable to complete their educational programs. It also would have allotted just $1.3 million to eligible tax-exempt nonprofit legal aid organizations to assist students so these crushing loans could be discharged.
This is the help the governor vetoed. He disparaged it as — to quote his veto message —“an attorney grant program … that provides little direction on how it should be used.” He omits much in this dismissive snort. He leaves out the fact that each of these schools, including Corinthian, includes a “no class action” clause in its “terms and conditions” that, under current U.S. Supreme Court precedent, precludes any class or group action. These students must seek redress one at a time. That means legal aid is important for them.
There is an old saying: “To err is human; to forgive is divine.” Perhaps “to err is human, to correct is divine.” Maybe that revision could appeal to someone trained in a seminary. The Legislature should try again next year to help these thousands of students, including many veterans, get the help they deserve. Robert C. Fellmeth is Price Professor of Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego School of Law and director of the Children’s Advocacy Institute. He wrote this for this newspaper.