Tensions ran high at a House Education and Labor Committee hearing on Thursday, where Democrats questioned U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about her implementation of the borrower’s defense rule, the provision that allows loan forgiveness for defrauded students.
The hearing is a part of an ongoing saga over what will happen to student borrowers who attended for-profit colleges that misled them about school services or the value of their degrees.
Democrats have criticized DeVos for failing to process defrauded students’ claims over an 18-month period, with more than 240,000 claims pending. Former students from Corinthian Colleges sued DeVos over their delayed loan repayments, and in October, she was held in contempt of court for mistakenly continuing to collect on loan payments against a court order. In November, the House Education and Labor Committee asked DeVos to testify, and when she indicated she wouldn’t attend the hearing, Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott, the committee’s chairman, threatened a subpoena.
“Defrauded borrowers have been cheated twice: First by their college, and then by a Department of Education that refuses to make them whole,” Scott said.
Committee Democrats blasted DeVos for leaving students from fraudulent or now-defunct schools in financial hardship, especially in light of memos shared by National Public Radio on Wednesday, which showed that career staff from the department’s borrower defense unit advised full loan forgiveness after reviewing cases. While the memos were technically under the Obama administration, they came weeks before DeVos stepped into her role.
DeVos blamed the Obama administration for the backlog of cases, arguing that “there was no process in place” to assess the validity of students’ claims. She also stressed her obligation to not only students but taxpayers.
“If claims are false or if students didn’t suffer financial harm, then hardworking taxpayers, including those who scraped and saved to faithfully pay their own students loans, should not have to pay somebody else’s student loans too,” DeVos said. “It’s a matter of fairness.”
