As The Washington Post reports:
The Education Department officials opened formal negotiations on Monday to rewrite federal rules meant to protect students from fraud by colleges and universities.
The talks with university representative and student advocates are taking place as the department faces criticism for delaying consideration of tens of thousands of loan forgiveness claims from students who say they were defrauded by for-profit colleges.
The 1994 rule, known as borrower defense, allowed loan forgiveness if it was determined that the college had deceived them. But the rule was rarely used until the demise of Corinthian and ITT Tech for-profit chains several years ago, when thousands of students flooded the department with requests to cancel their loans. In 2016, the Obama administration passed revisions to the rule, which clarified the process and added protections for students. DeVos froze those revisions until new rules can be written.
Our lawsuit challenging the delay of the protections adopted in 2016, which we blogged about here, and the similar one filed by state attorneys general are still pending. Briefing on motions for summary judgment is set to conclude by the end of the year.
