WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education drew both scorn and praise Monday at a public hearing on its plans to revamp two Obama-era rules meant to protect students from shady schools that leave them saddled with debt and no viable way to pay it off.
Advocates for student loan borrowers chided the department for its decision to “delay” enforcement of the rules, while representatives of for-profit career colleges thanked the department for putting the rules they described as burdensome and onerous on “pause.”
“We condemn the department’s decision to delay both rules together,” Joanna Darcus, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, stated at the hearing. “These rules provided critical protections to students and student loan borrowers who are ensnared by deceptive practices and false promises.”
Some advocates took aim at the for-profit colleges’ use of the word “pause,” which was a common refrain at Monday’s hearing on the department’s decision to postpone enforcement of the gainful employment and borrower defense rules.
“Students, veterans, and taxpayers have waited far too long already for these critical protections from unmanageable student debt, sudden school closures, and waste, fraud, and abuse in higher education,” said Jennifer Wang, director of the D.C. office for The Institute for College Access & Success, or TICAS. “They cannot afford a ‘pause’ in the Education Department’s progress against fraud and waste.”
But just as student-borrower advocates took exception to the word “pause,” proprietary college officials took exception to being branded and lumped together as “predatory.”
And they called for the gainful employment and borrower defense rules to either be applied across the board to all colleges and universities or for the rules to be scrapped altogether.
