< House Democrats Grill Betsy DeVos Over Denying Student Borrower Relief

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

The education secretary was on the receiving end of withering questioning today on Capitol Hill.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

That is right. Betsy DeVos appeared before the House Education Committee to talk about a rule known as borrower defense. It is meant to help students who say they were defrauded by for-profit colleges. But some 300,000 borrowers have been waiting - in many cases, for years - for DeVos' department to forgive their loans.

CHANG: Many of the committee's Democrats, like Andy Levin of Michigan, came out swinging.

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ANDY LEVIN: You go to the ends of the earth to defend a for-profit company that posts fake documents...

BETSY DEVOS: Congressman...

LEVIN: ...On its walls.

DEVOS: I am not committed to protecting any institution.

CHANG: NPR's Cory Turner has been covering this story and joins me now.

Hey, Cory.

CORY TURNER, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.

CHANG: All right. So just putting aside for the moment all that rancor, what is this fight really about?

TURNER: Well, in a word, fraud. But here's where it gets really interesting. DeVos and Democrats have wildly different views about who the victims are here. So let's start with the Democrats. Several years ago, some big for-profit college chains went belly-up - Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech. And so suddenly, thousands of students were coming to the Education Department, asking them to forgive their federal student loans...

CHANG: OK.

TURNER: ...Basically saying, look. These schools defrauded us. They lied to us. They guaranteed we would get jobs after college and that our credits would transfer, neither of which were true. In fact, just yesterday, NPR published internal ed department memos that showed right before DeVos was sworn in as secretary, career staff at the department actually agreed with these students that they had been defrauded. And so today Democrats on the committee insisted these borrowers deserved to have their loans completely erased.

CHANG: OK, so what did DeVos say about all that today?

TURNER: Well, DeVos doesn't believe that all of these student claims are valid. She made clear today that she thought the Obama administration had bullied for-profit colleges, and she repeatedly refused to say that Corinthian had committed actual fraud. Instead, she said, some of these students could be trying to defraud the government. She told the committee she thinks students with valid claims should be made whole.

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DEVOS: But if claims are false or students did not suffer financial harm, then hardworking taxpayers, including those who scraped and saved to faithfully pay their own student loans, should not have to pay somebody else's student loans, too.

TURNER: So earlier this week, DeVos unveiled a new plan to basically give students partial relief instead of, under the old plan, full relief.

CHANG: OK.

TURNER: And it goes like this. If students end up earning a decent living regardless of whether or not they were defrauded, DeVos reasons, then they shouldn't get all their loans forgiven, although it's clear that that idea, plus the really problematic math that's behind it, would set an incredibly high bar...

CHANG: Yeah.

TURNER: ...For borrowers to get any real help.

CHANG: Yeah. You mentioned earlier the internal Education Department memos that NPR published yesterday. I imagine those came up at the hearing today.

TURNER: They came up a lot, actually. The memos were leaked to NPR and show the department recommended - again, in early 2017 - that borrowers were the real victims here. And DeVos claimed not to have heard or read our story or to have read the memos, and that led to forceful pushback from many of the lawmakers, including this exchange with Rep Jahana Hayes from Connecticut.

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DEVOS: I don't...

JAHANA HAYES: So...

DEVOS: ...Need to read the document.

HAYES: In December 2019...

DEVOS: I know what I have...

HAYES: ...When NPR ran a story, it didn't cross your mind that maybe I should read this document.

DEVOS: I don't need to read every document.

HAYES: No, this one specifically - not the thousands of others; just this one.

DEVOS: Because a news outlet chose to print it?

HAYES: Yes.

CHANG: Wow.

TURNER: Instead, DeVos insisted on looking forward, saying she is staffing up, tripling the number of attorneys to review these student claims, though - we've got to be clear - that's still only around 60 staffers to go case-by-case through nearly 300,000 claims.

CHANG: That's NPR's Cory Turner.

Thank you, Cory.

TURNER: Thank you.

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