Ed Dept. forgave $17.2B in pupil loans, report finds

The Division of Schooling had forgiven $17.2 billion in federal pupil loans for practically 975,000 debtors as of April 30, by a program that enables debtors to hunt reduction in the event that they’ve been misled or defrauded by their faculty, the U.S. Authorities Accountability Workplace discovered in a report launched Thursday.

Beneath the borrower protection to compensation coverage, college students can apply for mortgage reduction in the event that they attended an establishment that engaged in sure sorts of misconduct, akin to misrepresenting graduates’ job and earnings prospects. This system has been on the books for years, however the division acquired few purposes till 2015, when the for-profit chain Corinthian Faculties closed.

Within the overwhelming majority of circumstances cited within the GAO report, ED officers forgave the loans of particular person debtors whose claims of institutional misconduct they deemed credible. However in addition they accepted group discharges for college students who attended seven schools discovered to have engaged in “widespread and pervasive” deceit.

Based on the report, 1 % of the borrower protection purposes have been denied.

North Carolina consultant Virginia Foxx, the Republican chair of the Home Schooling and the Workforce Committee, who initially requested the GAO report in 2016, cited the findings as additional proof that the Biden administration is making an attempt to foist unpaid pupil loans on taxpayers.

“When all you’ve acquired is a hammer, all the pieces seems like a nail,” she mentioned within the assertion. “For years, Democrat administrations have used unlawful interpretations of the borrower protection regulation and different pupil mortgage schemes as instruments to present the far left what it needs. Now, we’ve acquired the numbers to substantiate it.”

Persis Yu, deputy govt director of the Scholar Borrower Safety Heart, applauded the Biden administration’s efforts to supply reduction to debtors.

“For many years the U.S. Division of Schooling allowed predatory faculties to line their pockets with federal {dollars} at college students’ expense,” Yu mentioned. “To make these college students repay loans primarily based upon fraud and misconduct could be unjust. We’re happy with the Biden-Harris administration for lastly giving these debtors the reduction they desperately want and have been denied for manner too lengthy.”