Poll of the Day > Education Dept. considers tougher rules on loan forgiveness in fraud cases.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/03/575298922/ed-department-considering-more-stringent-rules-on-loan-forgiveness-for-fraud-vic

Updated at 5:15 p.m. ET

Trying to change Obama-era rules, the Trump administration is one step closer to making it more difficult for students to have loan debt wiped clean in cases involving fraud by universities.

The Department of Education has been making incremental moves toward watering down the policies for months, but a draft proposal obtained by Politico, lays out the administration's new vision, which places a higher burden of proof on students seeking to obtain debt forgiveness and requires applicants to individually present evidence that their college's deception was intentional.

The existing program, called Borrower Defense to Repayment, provides relief to federal student loan borrowers who attended a school that misled them or engaged in other misconduct in violation of certain laws.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos convened a special committee to rewrite the policy in June, saying the regulations are "overly burdensome and confusing" and need to be streamlined.

"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," DeVos said in a statement at the time.

According to Politico, the draft proposal says applicants would have to establish "clear and convincing evidence" of their fraud claim. This is a change from the standard set under President Barack Obama, which required only a "preponderance of evidence."

Additionally, the proposal says borrowers must "demonstrate that the college's misrepresentation to them was intentional or at least reflected 'a reckless disregard for the truth'." Finally, a person seeking to erase a debt must prove that the misrepresentation led to monetary damage.

Among other possible changes is a reduction in the time allotted to file a claim, from six years to three years "of the date the borrower discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the misrepresentation."

Since the Obama policies were implemented, DeVos has said, many for-profit colleges have complained that definitions of misrepresentation and breach of contract are too broad and that institutions lacked meaningful due process.

The rules were introduced in 2016 in response to several high-profile cases in which for-profit institutions including Corinthian Colleges, DeVry and ITT Tech committed widespread fraud by lying about job placement rates and used other deceptive tactics to lure students into enrolling.

A Department of Education official told members of Congress in July that the Trump administration had not approved any applications for student-loan forgiveness and that it had stopped reviews of any new claims since the start of the administration.

Records released to Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., show the department received nearly 15,000 new applications from borrowers who say they were victims of fraud between Jan. 20 and July 5.

A department spokeswoman said the moratorium on reviewing new applications would remain until a new system to adjudicate pending claims had been developed.

The Associated Press reported that in the final year of the Obama administration, the department approved more than 28,000 claims filed by former students of Corinthian Colleges. Those claims totaled $558 million.

In June, NPR reported that attorneys general from 18 states and Washington, D.C., filed suit against DeVos and her department, accusing DeVos of breaking federal law and giving free rein to for-profit colleges by rescinding the borrower defense rule.

The rule had been put on hold less than one month after DeVos said her agency would re-evaluate it.

NPR has requested a copy of the draft proposal.

The potential rules will be discussed next week at a three-day meeting starting Monday of the special committee assembled by DeVos, according to Education Department spokesman Alberto Betancourt. It is the second round of negotiations to establish new guidelines.

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Hmm...

Well, I suppose it's a balancing act. I have little doubt that the Obama-era regulations were more or less designed to shut down the entire for-profit college system (which, honestly, might not be a bad thing in principle but they ought to be direct about it) and this will no doubt move things too far in the other direction. Sooner or later, though, somebody will get it right.
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Come on Zeus, i know its a gimmick but jeez
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That seems fair actually, otherwise people could just rampantly abuse the system to get out of debt and tuition costs would rise even higher for students that actually pay off their loans

Our entire higher education system is borked and needs a hard restart, ideally all education that leads to gainful and useful employment should be covered by taxpayers IMO, but making it easy for people to fraudulently get out of debt is only going to make things worse
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this all sounds fine.
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Mead posted...

That seems fair actually, otherwise people could just rampantly abuse the system to get out of debt and tuition costs would rise even higher for students that actually pay off their loans

Our entire higher education system is borked and needs a hard restart, ideally all education that leads to gainful and useful employment should be covered by taxpayers IMO, but making it easy for people to fraudulently get out of debt is only going to make things worse

this.

but the population doesnt understand the benefits of an educated/skilled populous. all they see is a fraction of a fraction of a percent of their earnings going to a "lazy lib" or "minority" but when its someone that fits in with their primitive tribal urges then its ok and not socialism. just what that person has "earned"
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inb4 @FrndNhbrHdCEman changes his opinion.
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EvilMegas posted...

Come on Zeus, i know its a gimmick but jeez

Having opinions is a gimmick now? What?

Mead posted...

Our entire higher education system is borked and needs a hard restart, ideally all education that leads to gainful and useful employment should be covered by taxpayers IMO, but making it easy for people to fraudulently get out of debt is only going to make things worse

I'm not sure it should ever be free, simply because people tend to take things more seriously when they've personally invested in something (and, even as things stand now, we *already* have a lot of students who don't take their education seriously). It should be affordable, sure, and we already have a lot of subsidies for public universities. However, a large part of the affordability issue is the over-availability of generally government-back loans which have allowed many universities to continually raise tuition rather than control costs on their side.

NightShift posted...

but the population doesnt understand the benefits of an educated/skilled populous. all they see is a fraction of a fraction of a percent of their earnings going to a "lazy lib" or "minority" but when its someone that fits in with their primitive tribal urges then its ok and not socialism. just what that person has "earned"

Which brings us to problem #2: I'm not sure that the current system actually benefits a large number (perhaps even the majority) of participants. We have a lot of educated baristas and deli clerks, but those are jobs which don't need much education in the first place. Either the system is letting down students (whether it's the quality of the education or the course offerings which don't actually impart valuable skills) or the system isn't providing a benefit.

More generally, you shouldn't conflate "educated" with "skilled" because you actually teach skills outside of the college system. Those can be two very different functions. Colleges impart a general education whereas trade schools give very specific, practical skills and often do a better job of placing graduates in their fields. That's overlooking alternative high schools with curriculum designed to get kids into specific fields. Otherwise, we *already* invest a fortune in the public school system and it should be picking up more of the slack. Instead of generating productive graduates, it's currently turning out students who need to take remedial college courses.
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the uni system has charged me almost 7k in clerical errors
if anyone needs to be brought down it's them
everything was going fine until I transferred into that school something like 15 classes just became generic credits
and then their stupid system tells me years later i have the credits already and they try to pin it on me
if there is any evidence left over from the holocaust it's with those people I swear...
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I fought for around 2 months and filled in fucking notary forms for UF over the late/summer fall because they were charging me as an out of state student even though I had lived and worked at the university for three years to that point.

The past summer and fall were the only semester I paid tuition during graduate school because my waiver was up, and what do you know they tried to get more money out of me than they should have

Can be damn sure I got the difference refunded and treated as in-state. I only had the minimum credits per semester (because I only needed research credits left), and I still got like $3,700 back

Should be a problem I can just talk to someone on the phone or in person about, "Oh hey, check your records I've been an employee here and had a residence here for 3 years, I'm not out of state," but instead I had to go through hoops and wait months to get what was already mine.

Paperwork sucks, and people do not want to give your money back once they have it

Also, this has nothing to do with the topic

Veedrock- posted...

inb4 @FrndNhbrHdCEman changes his opinion.

What're ya smokin? Why tag me fam?
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ReggieTheReckless posted...

I fought for around 2 months and filled in fucking notary forms for UF over the late/summer fall because they were charging me as an out of state student even though I had lived and worked at the university for three years to that point.

The past summer and fall were the only semester I paid tuition during graduate school because my waiver was up, and what do you know they tried to get more money out of me than they should have

Can be damn sure I got the difference refunded and treated as in-state. I only had the minimum credits per semester (because I only needed research credits left), and I still got like $3,700 back

Should be a problem I can just talk to someone on the phone or in person about, "Oh hey, check your records I've been an employee here and had a residence here for 3 years, I'm not out of state," but instead I had to go through hoops and wait months to get what was already mine.

Paperwork sucks, and people do not want to give your money back once they have it

Also, this has nothing to do with the topic

they're pieces of shit didn't even offer me free classes
just a credit that I already had in another class and then they got upset when i got mad,
making me take these classes twice and not counting them
"that's not in our power" lying sack of shit throwing me under the bus like that lol
my friend had to bring his mom in to tell them their computer was fucking up his homework, it wouldn't accept his homeworks for that one class, i wrote a 10 page paper shit still wouldn't work for that one class so I had to bitch at them with my medical forms years later to have any chance of grad school
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Don't other countries have better help for people trying to go to college. I think the US is just bad with it. I don't really care right now as I don't have to pay for college yet(or possibly ever). But I might care if I ever have to pay. I might at some point.
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LinkPizza posted...

Don't other countries have better help for people trying to go to college. I think the US is just bad with it. I don't really care right now as I don't have to pay for college yet(or possibly ever). But I might care if I ever have to pay. I might at some point.

the colleges basically fill with people from other countries so any chance of even doing remotely well with good grades is uncertain, at least in the sciences
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LinkPizza posted...

Don't other countries have better help for people trying to go to college. I think the US is just bad with it. I don't really care right now as I don't have to pay for college yet(or possibly ever). But I might care if I ever have to pay. I might at some point.

Not sure that's really true. While other nations offer free college, we tend to have higher enrollment rates than most of them. Plus our schools tend to attract a *lot* of foreign nationals, which displaces our natives.

As it is, college is heavily subsidized, there are educational aid programs, government-backed loans, etc, without getting into non-university scholarships (my brother has always decried university-based scholarships as an entitlement which, in some senses, they could be construed as such but they usually have a merit component).

RoboXgp89 posted...

LinkPizza posted...

Don't other countries have better help for people trying to go to college. I think the US is just bad with it. I don't really care right now as I don't have to pay for college yet(or possibly ever). But I might care if I ever have to pay. I might at some point.

the colleges basically fill with people from other countries so any chance of even doing remotely well with good grades is uncertain, at least in the sciences

And ironically we have many med students go to foreign universities instead because of our more stringent guidelines which, humorously, aren't evenly applied because many of the foreign students with better GPAs obtain their degrees at less rigorous foreign universities and, if they instead when through American universities first, they'd likely hit the same problem.
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Public bailout of private loss was bullshit during the sub-prime mess, and it's still bullshit during the student loan mess.

EvilMegas posted...

Come on Zeus, i know its a gimmick but jeez

He's not wrong, though.

Zeus posted...

I have little doubt that the Obama-era regulations were more or less designed to shut down the entire for-profit college system

Zeus posted...

We have a lot of educated baristas and deli clerks, but those are jobs which don't need much education in the first place.

Which has in turn led to a job market where employers are asking ridiculous degree requirements for low paying jobs.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Which has in turn led to a job market where employers are asking ridiculous degree requirements for low paying jobs.

Nah.
That's mostly to just declare a job "unfillable" and import a cheap H-2B from India.

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Zeus posted...

We have a lot of educated baristas and deli clerks, but those are jobs which don't need much education in the first place.

Which has in turn led to a job market where employers are asking ridiculous degree requirements for low paying jobs.

Yes, pretty much every job now tries for a college graduate because there are so many of them around.

Questionmarktarius posted...

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Which has in turn led to a job market where employers are asking ridiculous degree requirements for low paying jobs.

Nah.
That's mostly to just declare a job "unfillable" and import a cheap H-2B from India.

That, too. My favorite case was the one where a job listing required more experience with a program than the program has been around for, leading to its creator joking that even he wouldn't qualify.
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people act like it's racist but it's really not THAT racist my classes are like 80percent asian and those people came here legally imagine what the other ones do to the economy working at construction and counter jobs
people say they pay taxes lol, I had neighbors next door that always had like 4, 5 cars outside in a 3 bedroom house
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