Betsy DeVos has her Education Department working hard to make it easier for for-profit colleges to get away with defrauding students. The department is holding meetings this week on “borrower defense” rules, which—under Obama administration rules—protect students from being left with huge student debt taken on because of a fraudulent enrollment pitch. But while student borrowers are represented at the Education Department meetings, that doesn’t mean they’re being heard: As pro-student negotiators no doubt will make clear over four days of meetings, the draft “borrower defense” regulations unveiled last week by the DeVos Department are a one-sided grant of power to the worst schools in the industry. This week’s negotiated rule-making sessions, therefore, seem to be an absolute charade. The DeVos drafts set up a range of major obstacles to former students getting loan relief after they were defrauded or abused by their schools — effectively rendering null and void the 1994 law that provides for such relief. The proposed DeVos rules also would ratify the for-profit college industry’s disgraceful practice — which the Obama regulations had banned — of using forced arbitration clauses to deny students the right to sue for their injuries. [...] While the regulatory process under Obama was a real tug of war, with Education Department and White House stances moving back and forth between positions urged by student advocates and industry lobbyists, under DeVos and Trump the process has moved inexorably toward the wish list of the worst industry actors, such as the awful Bridgepoint Education, one of whose lawyers, Linda Rawles, was picked by the DeVos Department to serve on the borrower defense stakeholder panel, among numerous other industry representatives. Why not just have the head of Trump University draft the rules directly? Read more