January 9, 2018

Backing DeVos Repeal of Obama Rules, For-Profit Colleges Vilify Students

Today is the second day of the second round of the Betsy DeVos Department of Education’s regulatory meetings to repeal and replace the Obama administration’s borrower defense rule — a rule that was aimed at protecting students and taxpayers from predatory practices by for-profit colleges. The DeVos Department’s intentions already have been made apparent, with
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January 8, 2018

DeVos Department Slamming Door on Defrauded Students

This morning in Washington, Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education resumed the stakeholder sessions that are required by law in order for the Trump administration to repeal and replace Obama-era rules aimed at protecting students and taxpayers from abuses by predatory for-profit colleges. As pro-student negotiators no doubt will make clear over four days of meetings,
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December 6, 2017

Will DeVos Turn Over Policy to Earth’s Most Entitled People?

At this week’s Department of Education ongoing public meeting to advance Betsy DeVos’s plan to repeal and replace the Obama rules on for-profit colleges, owners and executives of those institutions repeat familiar themes, both during formal sessions and in hallway conversations. Faced with evidence that many for-profit college students end up dropping out, or graduating
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December 4, 2017

Devos Department Meeting Again Stalls Over Opposition to Live-Streaming

Last month the Department of Education’s first meeting on rewriting the Obama “borrower defense” rule for student loans stalled for nearly the whole day over opposition by for-profit colleges and Department representatives to the organization Generation Progress / Higher Ed Not Debt and others live-streaming the meeting. Today, when the Department convened a parallel set
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December 4, 2017

To Rewrite Obama Rules, DeVos Picks People Tied to Predatory Colleges

After Betsy DeVos announced she was dumping the Obama gainful employment and borrower defense rules — measures designed to protect students and taxpayers against predatory abuses by for-profit colleges — and was starting a new round of rule-making, there was evidence that she was stacking the deck. Her Department of Education issued completely one-sided “issue papers”
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November 20, 2017

Ex-Bush Official Hansen Joins Board of Predatory For-Profit College Chain CEC, And It Makes Sense

A tangled web of for-profit connections adds up to more bad news for struggling students. For-profit college chain Career Education Corporation (CEC) announced last week that William D. Hansen has joined the company’s board of directors. It’s a disturbing validation by Hansen, a former top Department of Education official under George W. Bush, of a predatory
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November 13, 2017

DeVos Stands with Scoundrels, Not Students

The U.S. Department of Education under Secretary Betsy DeVos this week began the process of dismantling the rules issued under President Obama to constrain the predatory abuses of for-profit colleges. At the end of the troubling first day of what’s called negotiated rulemaking, members of the public were given an opportunity to speak. I was
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November 13, 2017

DeVos Department Tries to Block Public Streaming of Student Debt Hearing

Staff of the U.S. Department of Education this morning refused to let attendees live-stream its negotiated rulemaking meeting, the first in a series of sessions where the Trump-DeVos department is aiming to roll back Obama-era rules to protect students and taxpayers from predatory practices by for-profit colleges. It then actively resisted proposals from negotiators representing
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