After hearing that the Trump Administration is taking action to decrease students’ rights and protections, 33 veterans and military service organizations have been voicing their concerns of how badly these actions will harm veterans and their families.
Included among the organizations are Veterans for Common Sense, Student Veterans of America, The American Legion and Blue Star Families. Individual military veterans are also weighing in on the matter.
The veterans and military service organizations previously sent the U.S. Department of Education a public comment, calling on it to protect defrauded student veterans through the Borrower Defense and Gainful Employment regulations, which offer student loan forgiveness for students who have been defrauded.
The public comment stated, in part, “As you undertake a revision, please ensure that defrauded service members, veterans, and their dependents, families, and survivors receive loan forgiveness, and please ensure that the many pending applications at the Education Department are quickly granted relief under the current regulations. Please also maintain defrauded students’ access to the courts and their right to financially sound colleges through the financial responsibility triggers and warnings.”
The veterans organizations also have expressed concerns regarding the 90/10 loophole in the Higher Education Act. The act stipulates that up to 90 percent of a school’s money can come from the pool of federal dollars, but 10 percent of the school’s money must come from private dollars. Congress did not count veterans and military education benefits as federal money, creating a loophole that some for-profit colleges have been exploiting by aggressively recruiting veterans to collect the GI Bill Benefits and Defense Department Tuition Assistance funds and the other 10 percent of funding from the student’s private funds, according to the Veterans Education Success.
According to a 2014 report by the U.S. Senate, eight of the 10 schools receiving the most GI Bill funds were for-profit colleges, and seven of those eight were under law enforcement action for deceiving and defrauding students.
