news

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-MI) supported legislation to block changes to the Borrower Defense Rule by the Trump Administration’s Department of Education.

Thursday, the House passed an action that if also passed by the Senate would reverse the Trump Administration’s actions to deny relief to students defrauded or mislead by predatory colleges.

“We should not be protecting fraudulent institutions that prey on students. We should be working to prevent fraud in education in the first place,” said Dingell. “It is vital that defrauded students have a process that is fair and easy to understand, and this new guidance makes it substantially more difficult for these students to receive the relief that they desperately need. Denying debt relief to defrauded students is wrong.”

Video of Dingell speaking on the House floor on Borrower Defense is available here.

Students defrauded by predatory, for-profit colleges are often left with crushing debt, useless degrees, and none of the job opportunities they were promised. Under the Higher Education Act, student borrowers who are defrauded by predatory colleges are entitled to relief from the loans they took out to attend that school.

In 2016, following the collapse of Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute – two major for-profit college chains that consistently defrauded students – President Obama issued the Borrower Defense rule, creating a streamlined process to help defrauded borrowers access relief and move forward with their lives.

The Department of Education under the Trump Administration has made changes to Borrower Defense for Repayment Rules making it harder for students to get relief, even when the students have been defrauded or their school closed before they finished their degree.

###