Youth Groups Succeed in Stymying DeVos’ For-Profit Agenda: What Our Partners and Allies Think
Washington, D.C.— In a victory for consumers and student loan borrowers, the Trump administration admitted that the Betsy DeVos Department of Education will not meet its November 1st deadline to issue new Borrower Defense and Gainful Employment regulations. According to a Trump administration official, this was due to the high volume of comments received by the department.
A coalition of youth organizations led by Higher Ed, Not Debt and Generation Progress mobilized students and borrowers, the majority of whom have been wronged by predatory or fraudulent programs, to submit the record number of comments that helped delay the new rules. More than 13,000 of the nearly 40,000 comments submitted for Borrower Defense were driven by our coalition. For Gainful Employment, more than 12,000 of the nearly 14,000 comments submitted came from students and borrowers in our network.
Higher Ed, Not Debt and Generation Progress, with our coalition of youth organizations, will continue to fight alongside defrauded student loan borrowers in the face of opposition by Betsy DeVos and President Trump.
Here is what we and our partners have to say in response to this victory:
Full statements accessible via hyperlinks, where available.
Generation Progress Executive Director, Maggie Thompson
“Thousands of defrauded young people have come together to deny Secretary DeVos two of her main higher education priorities. Due in part to the thousands of public comment submissions made by young people and borrowers nationwide, we’ve stopped DeVos in her tracks. This delay opens up the pathway for giving full and immediate relief to cheated students and banning schools from using mandatory arbitration agreements that deny students their right to take bad actors to court.”
Project on Predatory Student Lending Director, Toby Merrill
“The Department’s proposed rules are so fundamentally flawed that no amount of time could put the Department’s proposals on strong legal footing. The Department should just abandon its attempts to deprive students of their rights, and cancel the loans of defrauded student loan borrowers once and for all. In its latest brief, the Department admits that there is no legal barrier to some of the 2016 borrower defense rule’s key legal protections. That rule should be put into place immediately.”
The Institute for College Access & Success President, James Kvaal
“The Department needs more time on its ill-conceived gainful employment and borrower defense
proposals, and that means that the current rules will remain the law of the land for at least 21 more
months. Now it’s long past time to end the illegal delays and implement them. Students need protection
against unaffordable loans and illegal practices.”