Former For-Profit College Students Suing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos

Former For-Profit College Students Suing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos

Is it her fault that they chose to attend these schools?

The Huffington Post reports:

Nearly 160,000 Former For-Profit College Students Sue Education Secretary Betsy DeVos

More than 158,000 former students at predatory for-profit colleges sued Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her department on Tuesday, demanding that the Department of Education continue reviewing applications for federal loan relief.

The former students had applied for “borrower defense,” which would allow them to have their federal loans canceled if their college misled them or violated state laws. But their applications have been left untouched. Since June 2018, the Department of Education has neither granted nor denied the “borrower defense” application of any plaintiff, according to the complaint ― leaving the former students waiting and in debt. (The department did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.)

The plaintiffs now hope the lawsuit will give them a second chance. They are represented by the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard’s Legal Services and Housing & Economic Rights Advocates (HERA). For-profit colleges implicated in the suit include the ITT Technical Institute, Corinthian Colleges, DeVry University and Brooks Institute of Photography.

Alicia Davis, a former student at Florida Metropolitan University, now called Everest University, said she and the other plaintiffs “have been pretty much scammed and defrauded and ruined when trying to go and do something with ourselves and better ourselves.”

“Literally 160,000-plus people cannot move on with their life because of this non-decision by Besty DeVos,” she added later.

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