Several advocacy groups on Wednesday assailed a U.S. Department of Education plan to roll back a pair of Obama administration regulations meant to protect students from shady colleges that leave students saddled with debt and little to nothing to show for it.
They used words such as “terrible,” “toxic,” “irresponsible” and “worrisome” to lambaste Wednesday’s announcement from U.S. Secretary of Education Besty DeVos that her department plans to set up two negotiated rulemaking committees to produce new versions of the so-called “borrower defense” and “gainful employment” regulations.
In anticipation of the criticism, the Education Department sought to assure interested parties Wednesday that it intends to develop “fair, effective and improved regulations to protect individual borrowers from fraud, ensure accountability across institutions of higher education and protect taxpayers.”
“My first priority is to protect students,” DeVos said in a statement. “Fraud, especially fraud committed by a school, is simply unacceptable.”
But DeVos added that the Obama administration “missed an opportunity to get it right” and ended up establishing a “muddled process that’s unfair to students and schools, and puts taxpayers on the hook for significant costs.”
“It’s time for a regulatory reset,” DeVos said. “It is the Department’s aim, and this Administration’s commitment, to protect students from predatory practices while also providing clear, fair and balanced rules for colleges and universities to follow.”
Some advocacy groups invested little stock in DeVos’s assurances.
