Eighteen Democratic attorneys general filed a suit against Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on Tuesday over her plans to end an Obama-era rule that punishes career-training programs that leave students with more loans than they can pay back.
Earlier this year DeVos stopped enforcement of the “gainful employment” rule, “which cuts off federal financial aid funding to career college programs that saddle students with heavy debt and low salaries,” according to BuzzFeed News.
An example, according to BuzzFeed News, is for-profit Art Institutes of Phoenix where fashion design students make less than $25,000 a year, but had to pay $6,200 towards their loans. Under the gainful employment rule the program is required to inform students of their outcomes.
The 17 states and the District of Columbia who are suing DeVos argue she is breaking the law by not enforcing the regulation and that she is obligated to enforce it as written.
“This is just the latest in a string of frivolous lawsuits filed by Democratic attorneys general who are only seeking to score quick political points,” said Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill in a statement. “While this administration, and Secretary DeVos in particular, continue work to replace this broken rule with one that actually protects students, these legal stunts do nothing more than divert time and resources away from that effort.”
DeVos argues that the gainful employment rule “would unfairly and arbitrarily limit students’ ability to pursue certain types of higher education and career training programs,” while opposers believe that without it students are left vulnerable to fraud and exploitation.
“It’s outrageous for the department to say they’re going to allow these predatory institutions to continue to take advantage of people who are vulnerable, people with very few resources,” said Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, who is leading the lawsuit, in an interview with the Washington Post.
If DeVos succeeds in reversing the regulation it will, like most things, disproportionately affect Black students who incur higher student loan debt than their white counterparts, largely due to for-profit institutions, according to The Root.
“Researchers found that graduate school discrepancies contributed the most to that yawning debt gap,” wrote the Root. “Not only were black grads more likely to continue their studies, 28% of them enrolled in a for-profit school, while less than 10% of white grads did so.”
