[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 72 (Thursday, April 27, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2594-S2597]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  For-Profit Colleges and Universities

  Mr. President, during the Senate's consideration of Betsy DeVos to be 
Secretary of Education, I asked a basic question: As Secretary of 
Education, would she side with corporate and other for-profit interests 
or would she be on the side of the students and their families?
  I was concerned that the record of Secretary DeVos indicated that she 
was on the side of corporate interests, looking for opportunities to 
profit off of students and often exploiting them in the process.
  Months into the job, now that she was approved by a historic 
tiebreaking vote by the Vice President, we are beginning to see which 
side the Secretary is on. A recent Chicago Tribune article entitled 
``Targeted by Obama, DeVry and other for-profit colleges rebounding 
under Trump'' put it this way:

       Less than 100 days into Trump's presidency, the Department 
     of Education under Secretary Betsy DeVos has delayed 
     implementation of gainful employment rules . . . withdrawn 
     key federal student loan servicing reforms . . . and signaled 
     a less onerous regulatory environment for the essentially 
     taxpayer-financed career education [or for-profit] sector.

  A group of State attorneys general, including Lisa Madigan of 
Illinois, warned of a return to ``open season'' on students in a letter 
to Secretary DeVos if she rolled back all of these protections.
  I ask unanimous consent that the full text of that letter from the 
State attorneys general be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


                               Office of the Attorney General,

                                                February 22, 2017.
     Re How For-profit Schools Have Harmed Student Borrowers: the 
         Need for the Gainful Employment Rule, Vigorous Federal 
         Oversight of Accreditors, and the Borrower Defense to 
         Repayment Rule

     Hon. Elisabeth DeVos,
     Secretary, U.S. Department of Education,
     Washington, DC.
     Speaker Paul Ryan,
     Speaker of the House, House of Representatives,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Senate Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Nancy Pelosi,
     House Minority Leader, House of Representatives, Washington, 
         DC.
     Hon. Charles E. Schumer,
     Senate Minority Leader, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Secretary DeVos, Speaker Ryan, Senator McConnell, 
     Congresswoman Pelosi, Senator Schumer: We, the undersigned 
     Attorneys General of Illinois, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, 
     Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, 
     New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, 
     Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of 
     Columbia, as well as the Executive Director of the Office of 
     Consumer Protection of Hawaii, write to express our support 
     for recent federal protections for students and taxpayers in 
     higher education. We are deeply concerned that rollbacks of 
     these protections would again signal ``open season'' on 
     students for the worst actors among for-profit post-secondary 
     schools. As the chief consumer law enforcement agencies in 
     our states, our offices handle thousands of complaints 
     concerning higher education every year. We also enforce laws 
     to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive practices 
     perpetrated by higher education providers.


  I. Background: The Need for Rules to Protect Students and Taxpayers 
  from Unfair and Deceptive Practices by For-Profit Higher Education 
                               Providers

       Over the last ten years, student loan debt has soared from 
     $450 billion to nearly $1.4 trillion. A major driver of this 
     increase has been for-profit colleges. Of the top 25 schools 
     where students hold the most student loan debt, over half 
     were for-profit schools in 2014. This is up from only one 
     for-profit institution in the top 25 in 2000.
       In addition to driving the increase in student loan 
     borrowing, for-profit institutions also have significantly 
     more loan defaults than other types of institutions. Since 
     2013, for-profit institutions accounted for 35% of all 
     federal student loan defaults, but enrolled just 27% of all 
     borrowers. Many for-profit schools are almost entirely 
     dependent on federal grants and loans. In December 2016, the 
     U.S. Department of Education (``ED'') found that nearly 200 
     for-profit schools derive more than 90% of their income from 
     federal sources. The only reason that many of these 
     institutions are in compliance with the federal 90/10 Rule is 
     that certain categories of federal money, including GI Bill 
     money, are excluded from the rule and thus count toward the 
     10% that is supposed to be non-federal money.
       Over the past fifteen years, millions of students have been 
     defrauded by unscrupulous for-profit post-secondary schools. 
     With accreditors asleep at the wheel, State Attorneys General 
     Offices have stepped in to stop some of the worst abuses. The 
     list of State Attorney General investigations and enforcement 
     actions against for-profit colleges is long, including 
     actions against: American Career Institute; Ashford 
     University/Bridgepoint Education, Inc.; Corinthian Colleges, 
     Inc.; Career Education Corporation; Education Management 
     Corporation; Daymar College; DeVry University; ITT Tech; 
     National College of Kentucky; and Westwood Colleges, among 
     others. These schools, and others like them, engaged in a 
     variety of deceptive and abusive practices. Some promised 
     prospective students jobs, careers, and further opportunities 
     in education that the schools could not provide. Many schools 
     inflated job placement numbers and/or promised career 
     services resources that did not exist. Many nationally-
     accredited schools promised that their credits would 
     transfer, even though credits from nationally-accredited 
     schools often do not transfer to more rigorous regionally-
     accredited schools. Many students were placed in loans that 
     the schools knew from experience their graduates could not 
     pay back. The schools were overseen by accreditors who failed 
     to take action to protect students or the taxpayers who 
     funded their federal student loans, despite ample evidence of 
     these and other problems. In short, the entire for-profit 
     education system was failing students and taxpayers. As 
     investigations and prosecutions initiated by our offices shed 
     light on these problems, ED began to take steps to remedy 
     these harms, issuing new regulations and reformulating 
     policies to help protect students and taxpayers.
       Three of these recent steps--the Gainful Employment Rule, 
     the policy of vigorous federal oversight of accreditors, and 
     the Borrower Defense to Repayment Rule--are essential to 
     protect both consumers and taxpayers from fraudulent actors 
     in the for-profit education sector. The Gainful Employment 
     Rule is a measure of graduates' debt-to-income and is 
     designed to ensure that programs produce graduates that are 
     able to pay back their student loans. Prospectively, the 
     federal government recognizes accreditors who have standards 
     sufficient to show that the schools they accredit provide a 
     quality education and should have access to federal student 
     loans and grants. Finally, where other protections fail and 
     students are defrauded by bad actors, the Borrower Defense to 
     Repayment Rule provides a formal process for students to 
     assert a defense to repayment of their federal student loans.


 II. Corinthian Colleges: An Example of the Harm Faced by Students and 
                               Taxpayers

       The egregious conduct of Corinthian Colleges illustrates 
     how each of these three policies is necessary to avoid harm 
     to both students and taxpayers. In March 2016, after an 
     extensive review of published job placement rates at 
     Corinthian campuses nationwide, the Department of Education 
     found that the job placement rates were fraudulent for 
     hundreds of cohorts from 2010-2014. Corinthian was telling 
     the world that far more of its students obtained jobs than 
     actually did, inducing students to enroll. Many of these 
     students were left without jobs in their field of study. 
     Without these jobs, many are saddled with debt they cannot 
     repay, defaulting on loans funded with taxpayer dollars.
       Had the gainful employment regulations been in place, 
     Corinthian's programs that weren't producing jobs for 
     students would have been shut down because the median debt-
     to-income ratio would have shown that students were not 
     making enough money to pay down their loans. Had Corinthian's 
     accreditors reviewed the school's self-reported job placement 
     data on a regular basis, the fraud would have been discovered 
     and stopped much earlier, saving students and taxpayers 
     billions of dollars.
       The absence of policies in place to protect prospective 
     students from Corinthian's fraudulent practices also 
     demonstrates the

[[Page S2595]]

     need for an effective process for students to assert a 
     defense to loan repayment. This defense was established in 
     the 1990s when Congress passed legislation allowing students 
     to assert claims against their schools as a defense to 
     repayment of their federal student loans. There was little 
     detail, however, on the process for asserting such claims. 
     The regulations set to take effect on July 1, 2017 give 
     borrower defense to repayment set processes so that students, 
     schools, and taxpayers have an orderly process, and a degree 
     of certainty, moving forward.
       Without the Gainful Employment Rule, meaningful oversight 
     of accreditors, and an orderly borrower defense process, we 
     face the prospect of for-profit schools continuing to line 
     their pockets with taxpayer dollars while students and 
     taxpayers experience another crushing wave of defaulted 
     student loan debt.


                    III. The Gainful Employment Rule

       ED's gainful employment regulations are designed to further 
     a simple idea--that students who attend career training 
     programs should be able to repay their federal student loans 
     once they graduate. The Rule allows prospective students to 
     compare debt-to-income ratios across schools. By doing this, 
     the Rule creates an incentive for schools to make good on 
     their promises to students, and protects students from 
     programs that will leave them saddled with debt and without 
     job prospects in the careers for which they trained.
       The Rule generally applies to vocational programs at for-
     profit institutions and to non-degree programs at community 
     colleges. If graduates' annual loan payments exceed 30% of 
     discretionary income and 12% of total earnings in two out of 
     three consecutive years, the program loses access to Title IV 
     federal student loans and grants. A program can also lose 
     access if graduates' annual loan payments exceed 20% of 
     discretionary income and 8% of total earnings for four 
     consecutive years.
       Data released on January 9, 2017 indicate that over 800 
     programs fail the Department's Gainful Employment metrics. 
     For-profit institutions are responsible for 98% of the 
     failing programs. But these 800 programs are only a portion 
     of the for-profit school programs that have failed their 
     students. With the Gainful Employment Rule pending, for-
     profit institutions have already eliminated hundreds of 
     programs where students did not make enough money to cover 
     their debt obligations, sometimes closing entire institutions 
     that would have failed to provide students with gainful 
     employment under the regulations.
       It is essential that the Gainful Employment Rule be kept in 
     place. Removing the Rule would open students and taxpayers up 
     to the worst excesses of the for-profit higher education 
     sector. It would greatly increase the regulatory and 
     enforcement burden on states and accreditors by removing a 
     central protection from the federal leg of the triad that 
     oversees higher education in the United States.


              IV. Vigorous Oversight of Accreditors by ED

       The federal government and states need strong partners with 
     specialized knowledge of higher education to provide 
     prospective quality assurance of schools in order to protect 
     students and taxpayers. Accreditors are the organizations 
     tasked with this role. Our experience, however, has shown 
     that without substantive oversight by the federal government, 
     some accreditors are negligent in their role.
       The primary example of this dereliction of duty to students 
     and taxpayers is the Accrediting Council for Independent 
     Colleges and Schools (ACICS). As noted in our April 8, 2016 
     comment to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional 
     Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) opposing ACICS's application 
     for renewal of recognition, a recent study found that only 
     35% of students enrolled in ACICS accredited programs 
     graduate, the lowest rate for any accreditor.
       NACIQI, a bipartisan panel, voted to revoke ACICS's 
     recognition in June 2016. The Senior Department Official at 
     ED agreed with NACIQI and revoked ACICS's recognition as an 
     accreditor in September, 2016. ACICS appealed the decision to 
     the Secretary of Education, and in December 2016, the 
     Secretary denied ACICS's appeal.
       An accreditor's failure to verify program quality at its 
     accredited institutions jeopardizes the effectiveness of 
     state enforcement efforts and regulations, exposing each 
     state's students to subpar educational programs that provide 
     little value, but for which each student may borrow tens of 
     thousands of dollars in student loans, that are nearly 
     impossible to discharge in bankruptcy.
       A prime example of the harm that stems from lax 
     accreditation was brought to light by state action against 
     Westwood College. The Illinois Attorney General's Office sued 
     Westwood College for systematically misrepresenting the 
     ability of its criminal justice graduates to pursue careers 
     in law enforcement. Thousands of Westwood students in 
     Illinois borrowed up to $75,000 each for careers they were 
     unable to pursue because many police departments in Illinois, 
     including the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois 
     State Police, did not accept credits from nationally-
     accredited schools. Graduates of Westwood's criminal justice 
     program have a median salary below the median salary of a 25-
     year old with a high school diploma, in part because they 
     were locked out of the career they had been promised. This 
     combination of high debt and limited job prospects is a 
     crushing blow not only to students, but to taxpayers who bear 
     the burden of defaults on these loans. Despite the Illinois 
     Attorney General's January 2012 suit against Westwood, ACICS 
     accredited Westwood up to the day it closed its doors in 
     March 2016.
       Similarly, on September 8, 2016, a Hennepin County Court 
     found that the Minnesota School of Business and Globe 
     University systematically misrepresented their criminal-
     justice program as allowing students to pursue careers as 
     Minnesota police officers or probation or parole officers. 
     The Minnesota School of Business and Globe University were 
     accredited by ACICS throughout the time period of the fraud 
     determined by the Court, and their Chief Operating Officer 
     during that time was in fact the Chair of ACICS's board of 
     directors. Terminating ACICS's recognition is a responsible 
     action that will protect students and taxpayers for years to 
     come.


               V. The Borrower Defense to Repayment Rule

       In order to fairly and efficiently redress the harms 
     suffered by for-profit college students, the borrower defense 
     to repayment rule promulgated by ED must be allowed to take 
     effect on July 1, 2017. As we noted in our August 1, 2016 
     comment to the proposed rule, students need a fair and 
     transparent process to apply for borrower defense to 
     repayment, and that process is missing from the existing 
     regulation. The regulation finalized by ED also contains 
     significant protections for taxpayers, including the 
     requirement that schools cannot use arbitration agreements to 
     bar students from bringing borrower defense claims directly 
     against the school in court.
       It is important to note that these regulations do not 
     create a new defense to repayment. Congress established the 
     borrower defense to repayment in the 1990s. Furthermore, over 
     the last two years, ED has created substantial documentation 
     of what constitutes a valid borrower defense claim under the 
     existing regulation. Not only will the defense continue to be 
     available, but it is likely that claims will continue to be 
     asserted, particularly if regulations surrounding for-profit 
     institutions, such as gainful employment, are loosened, 
     allowing the bad practices of the past to return. Because the 
     defense will continue to exist, a formal, transparent process 
     to assert the defense, as reflected in the new repayment 
     rule, is essential.
       A basic sense of justice requires that the borrower defense 
     to repayment rules be allowed to take effect. Millions of 
     students paid tens of thousands of dollars each in federal 
     student loan money to for-profit schools and received 
     worthless degrees in return. Federal student loan debt is 
     non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. These students cannot be 
     left without a clear recourse. The new borrower defense to 
     repayment regulations provide that recourse and should be 
     allowed to take effect.
       Our extensive experience in the higher education field, and 
     our participation in the process of developing these recent 
     policies and regulations, gives us unique insight into the 
     abusive and deceptive practices of for-profit schools over 
     the last ten years. We cannot overemphasize the harm to 
     students and taxpayers that a rollback of federal protections 
     would cause. Our offices hear from former for-profit students 
     on a daily basis; sadly, many are hopeless. They have little 
     hope of paying off their student loans without the career 
     prospects promised by their schools. They have little hope of 
     continuing their educations without the ability to transfer 
     their credits from the many nationally-accredited for-profits 
     to more rigorous regionally-accredited schools. Allowing for-
     profit schools unfettered access to federal student loan 
     money without reasonable oversight and accountability is a 
     mistake that American students and taxpayers should not be 
     made to pay for again.
           Sincerely,
       Lisa Madigan, Illinois Attorney General; Matthew Denn, 
     Delaware Attorney General; Tom Miller, Iowa Attorney General; 
     Brian E. Frosh, Maryland Attorney General; Maura Healy, 
     Massachusetts Attorney General; Hector Balderas, New Mexico 
     Attorney General; George Jepsen, Connecticut Attorney 
     General; Douglas S. Chin, Hawaii Attorney General; Andy 
     Beshear, Kentucky Attorney General; Janet T. Mills, Maine 
     Attorney General.
       Lori Swanson, Minnesota Attorney General; Eric 
     Schneiderman, New York Attorney General; Josh Stein, North 
     Carolina Attorney General; Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania 
     Attorney General; TJ Donovan, Vermont Attorney General; Karl 
     A. Racine, District of Columbia Attorney General; Ellen F. 
     Rosenblum, Oregon Attorney General; Peter Kilmartin, Rhode 
     Island Attorney General; Bob Ferguson, Washington State 
     Attorney General; Stephen H. Levins, Executive Director, 
     Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection.

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we know what open season means when it 
comes to these students. Gilbert Caro of Chicago can tell us. He was 
profiled in the Chicago Tribune article that I mentioned. Gilbert 
received his master of business administration degree from DeVry 
University. It is possibly the second largest for-profit college in the 
United States.

[[Page S2596]]

  He took on nearly $100,000 in debt for his master of business 
administration degree. He believed that debt was worth it because it 
was going to unlock the door to a high-paying job and financial 
security.
  Do you have any idea what Gilbert Caro is doing now with his DeVry 
master of business administration degree? He is a prison guard in 
Joliet, IL.
  While Gilbert has a good job, he certainly didn't need $100,000 in 
debt to be a prison guard. It is far from what he was promised by DeVry 
when he signed up. Gilbert, like so many other students who go to for-
profit colleges, was lured in by an amazing marketing campaign, flashy 
advertisements and empty promises.
  In 2016, DeVry University, a for-profit school, agreed to a $100 
million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for misleading 
``prospective students with ads that touted high employment success 
rates and income levels upon graduation.''
  DeVry is not alone. For-profit college giants like Corinthian and ITT 
Tech collapsed after they were caught engaging in similar deceptive, 
disgusting practices. The predatory practices of these and other for-
profit colleges have left tens of thousands of students across the 
country, just like Gilbert Caro, with worthless degrees and a mountain 
of debt.
  In fact, during the early part of this century, when for-profit 
colleges acted with near impunity, just the students from the for-
profit colleges and universities accounted for 47 percent of all 
student loan defaults. Ten percent of the students coming out of high 
school went to for-profit colleges, and 47 percent of the student loan 
defaults were those same students--10 and 47. Why? Because they were 
overcharged for worthless degrees. That is why.
  The University of Phoenix students held almost $35 billion in 
cumulative debt. When I look at their flashy advertising and the 
commercials about how life is going to be perfect if you sign up at the 
University of Phoenix, it is hard for me to imagine how many of those 
students are burdened with debt they will never be able to repay.
  We also know what open season means for the for-profit college 
industry and its executives and investors. Between 1998 and 2008, 
enrollment at for-profit colleges exploded by 225 percent--a lot of 
advertising, a lot of marketing, a lot of recruiting. With it came 
exploding profits for these schools.
  By 2009, the seven largest publicly traded for-profit college 
companies were worth a combined $51 billion--2009, $51 billion.
  In 2010, the University of Phoenix alone enrolled nearly half a 
million students, more than the combined enrollment of all the Big Ten 
universities.
  When former Senate HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin released his 
seminal report on the industry in 2012, for-profit colleges had grown 
to take in an incredible $32 billion a year in Federal taxpayer 
dollars, 25 percent of all Federal aid in education, despite enrolling 
only 10 percent of the students that went to college after high school.
  For-profit colleges and universities are the most heavily subsidized 
private businesses in America that exist. No one rivals them. No other 
industry is even close, and 80, 85, 90, 95 percent of the revenue of 
these so-called private, for-profit universities ends up coming out of 
the Federal Treasury.
  John Murphy, the cofounder of the University of Phoenix, talks about 
those days by saying that what started off as a serious venture to 
educate students soon became too focused on ``chasing stock prices.''
  To pump up those stock prices, companies needed students and they 
needed Federal student aid dollars. They proved that they would do and 
promise nearly anything to get ``the juice,'' as Mr. Murphy, the 
cofounder of the University of Phoenix, called it.
  Boy, is this industry itching for the Trump administration to return 
to those bad old days. The Chicago Tribune reports that since the 
November 8 election, the stock prices of DeVry University, a for-profit 
college, have increased 52 percent.
  In a recent New York Times article by Patricia Cohen entitled ``For-
Profit Schools, an Obama Target, See New Day Under Trump,'' the paid 
spokesman for the for-profit college industry, former Congressman Steve 
Gunderson, said he ``has repeatedly spoken with members of Trump's 
transition team . . . White House domestic policy advisers . . . and 
congressional Republicans.''
  He is truly an insider. Mr. Gunderson promised: ``We're going to get 
some regulatory relief.''
  Sadly, it looks like he is right. Take for example the delay of the 
gainful employment regulation. The Obama administration spent years 
writing and rewriting regulations to ensure that career training 
programs meet the statutory requirement to prepare students for 
``gainful employment.''
  Is that a radical idea--that if the Federal Government is going to 
provide grants and loans for a student to go to a school, the school 
should provide education and training that would lead to ``gainful 
employment''?
  My colleague from Oklahoma was on the floor a little while ago 
talking about overregulation, too many rules, and the impacts on small 
business. I would say that I am prepared to stand up and defend what 
the Obama administration did in saying that if you were going to lure a 
young man like Gilbert Caro into a school and put him $100,000 in debt 
for a master's of business administration, he ought to at least end up 
with a job that is consistent with his education.
  Today, Mr. Caro is a prison guard with $100,000 of debt and a 
business administration degree of no value to him.
  The gainful employment rule cuts off title IV funding for programs 
where graduates' ratio of student debt to earnings is too high. 
Literally, the students are too deeply in debt.
  Prior to leaving office, the Obama Department of Education released 
the first set of gainful employment data. It showed that the graduates 
of public undergraduate certificate programs, like community colleges, 
earn $9,000 more than their for-profit counterparts on average.
  Think about that. You go to the virtually free community college, get 
a certificate, and you are going to earn $9,000 more than if you get 
deeply in debt at one of the for-profit schools seeking the same 
degree. Of the programs that saddle students with too much debt 
compared to the income its students receive after their program, 98 
percent of the violators were for-profit colleges.
  This is not just a chance occurrence. It is a pattern. The rule is 
meant to protect students from taking on debt to attend programs that 
don't lead to a good-paying job. The rule is also meant to prevent 
billions in taxpayers' dollars on worthless programs.
  Many for-profit colleges receive more than 90 percent of the revenue 
straight from Federal taxpayers. My Republican colleagues are committed 
to the free market system. So am I. I am committed to capitalism. I 
believe in it. Though, I think there is need for us to have regulation 
when it gets out of hand. That is why we have an antitrust division, 
for example.
  In this circumstance, to argue that these are just private companies 
that are doing what ordinary people do when they start a business is to 
ignore the obvious. These for-profit colleges could not exist if they 
weren't receiving 80, 85, 90, and 95 percent of their revenue directly 
from the Federal Treasury.
  In recent testimony before a House subcommittee, the Department of 
Education inspector general agreed that the gainful employment 
regulation ``is a good rule in terms of protecting [students] and 
protecting taxpayers.''
  I sent a letter--along with Senators Patty Murray, Elizabeth Warren, 
and nine other colleagues--expressing our concerns to Secretary DeVos 
about her delaying this rule. In our letter, we made clear that these 
delays undermine the rule and are going to be a danger to students and 
taxpayers.
  It is also a betrayal of students not to ensure that they are treated 
fairly after they have been taken advantage of by for-profit schools.
  Today, POLITICO reported that the Trump administration has 
dramatically slowed, if not stopped, processing applications from tens 
of thousands of students seeking to have their Federal student loans 
discharged after they have been defrauded by for-profit colleges.
  Think about that. A student is about to sign up for a for-profit 
school.

[[Page S2597]]

Maybe he doesn't know much about higher education. His parents say: 
Listen, if you can get a Pell grant and a Federal student loan, this 
must be a really good school.
  He is defrauded into signing up for a school that is too expensive 
and offers a worthless degree, and then they turn around and that 
school goes bankrupt. Now the student has the debt, no degree, and we 
are left holding the bag. What has happened in previous cases is the 
Federal Government stepped in and discharged the students from the debt 
if they were defrauded into signing up for the college.

  Secretary Betsy DeVos has decided to slow that down--to slow down the 
discharge of these students' debt. Students who were misled or 
defrauded by their schools are eligible for discharge of their Federal 
student loans under the Higher Education Act--the law as it now exists. 
Yet during her confirmation process, Secretary DeVos would not commit 
to providing this relief to students--relief already specified in law--
and has now effectively stopped processing the claims.
  On the day before President Trump took office, more than 3,200 
Illinois students applied to the Department of Education for relief. 
While the Department fails to process these claims, these students are 
left in the lurch. It adds insult to injury that students taken 
advantage of by for-profit colleges, nominally supervised and regulated 
by the Federal Government, are now being ignored by the Federal 
Government's Department of Education. That is unacceptable. It is 
unfair, and the Trump administration should change it.
  We've started to see the true colors of the administration and 
Secretary DeVos when it comes to these students who have been 
victimized. As feared, the Department has thus far put for-profit and 
other commercial interests ahead of students and taxpayers.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blunt). The Senator from Mississippi.