Lawmakers Demand For-Profit Apologist Betsy DeVos Forgive Charlotte Law Loans
Charlotte Law students shouldn't expect much help from this administration.
Betsy DeVos (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Something tells me the demands aren’t going to get very far.
Betsy DeVos, America’s Secretary of Education and last line of defense against escalating bear attacks, is not shy about her faith in private education. By all indications, DeVos didn’t realize public schools existed until she was blindsided at her confirmation hearing with unfair questions about “the job she was nominated to perform.”
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And over the course of her tumultuous tenure, she’s not wavered from her commitment to defend the right to make a buck on the hopes and dreams of students. The heiress publicly blamed students for wanting “free money” while she gutted Obama-era rules to protect students taken in by sham institutions. Hey, predatory lenders gotta eat too.
So it’s probably best not to hold one’s breath that DeVos will show much sympathy to students of the defunct Charlotte School of Law, who find themselves under mounds of debt after the school finally closed. A number of North Carolina’s congressional delegation are holding out the dimmest of hope however. Representatives Alma Adams, G.K. Butterfield, and David Price sent a letter to DeVos seeking full forgiveness of the loans to allow the students to move on with their lives:
“Students have been saddled with an average of $200,000 in loan debt, and many have no degree to show for it, yet the Department of Education is considering only partial relief for defrauded students. I urge Secretary DeVos to show compassion for the students impacted and expedite all available procedures to forgive their loans,” the letter read.
Despite this, DeVos appears to be following the script that we predicted during the frenzy of Charlotte Law’s death throes and bending over backward to protect everyone but the students, bandying around a partial forgiveness plan that would give students a pittance for falling prey to flawed for-profit models that banked on the imprimatur of misguided seals of approval from federal and state governments. It would seem that these enablers should take some of the blame for what’s happened, lest we further erode citizen faith in government institutions and there’s no way that’s the plan.
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Even amid reports that DeVos is eyeing an exit from this administration — duly humbled by the prospect of actually working a day in her life and longing for a return to just sitting in board rooms and rubber stamping the efforts of others — Charlotte’s students aren’t likely to receive a better shake from whomever succeeds DeVos. The pinnacle of this administration has already shelled out $25 million to settle claims that he lent his name to a fake school, so there may be other priorities at work here.
But, the Trump administration has gone 291 days old without a deadly bear attack. So there’s that.
N.C. Democrats urge Charlotte Law School student loan forgiveness [News & Observer]
Betsy DeVos Accused Students Who Were Defrauded by For-Profit Colleges of Wanting “Free Money” [GQ]
The Education of Betsy DeVos [Politico]
Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
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