[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 2, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2180-S2183]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RECESS
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate stands in
recess until 5:30 p.m.
Thereupon, the Senate, at 4:30 p.m., recessed until 5:30 p.m. and
reassembled when called to order by the Presiding Officer (Mr. Rounds).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
PROTECT Students Act
Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleague from
Illinois, Senator Durbin, to discuss the work we are doing to protect
students and taxpayers from predatory higher education practices. I
want to thank Senator Durbin for his incredible and steadfast
leadership on this issue.
All hard-working students deserve the opportunity to receive a
quality education that will prepare them to compete in this 21st-
century economy. Education is the cornerstone of expanding opportunity,
and it is vital that we ensure that more students have access to
quality, affordable higher education that will help them thrive.
Unfortunately, too often, hard-working students, including our
veterans and servicemembers, are taken advantage of by predatory for-
profit colleges. We have seen this issue time and again.
Years ago, we witnessed the collapse of Corinthian Colleges, Inc.,
and ITT Tech. Recently, we saw the collapses of Education Corporation
of America, Vatterott College, and Dream Center Education Holdings.
Students attended these institutions with the hope of furthering their
education and building better lives for themselves and their families.
In reality, though, these companies were raking in billions of
taxpayer funds that enriched their executives and investors, all while
their students were receiving subpar degrees at high costs even though
they were often recruited with the promise of a good-paying job after
graduation. This has left tens of thousands of student borrowers with
huge amounts of debt that they will never be able to repay, credits or
degrees of little value, and few job prospects.
Unscrupulous actions by for-profit colleges have also widely impacted
our country's veterans who bravely fought in defense of our freedoms
and then, in turn, were taken advantage of by predatory, corrupt
schools.
Our current system has done little to stop these bad actors. Students
and taxpayers have been exploited in astounding ways and to an
outrageous degree. We need to do more to address and to stop these
predatory practices. That is why I was pleased and honored to join with
Senator Durbin last week to introduce the Preventing Risky Operations
from Threatening the Education and Career Trajectories of Students Act
of 2019, otherwise known as the PROTECT Students Act.
This legislation would implement a number of commonsense protections
to hold predatory institutions, including for-profit schools,
accountable when they engage in unfair, deceptive, and other fraudulent
practices.
To start, the PROTECT Students Act would safeguard our veterans and
servicemembers from predatory practices. It would close a loophole in
existing law that allows colleges to count GI benefits as non-Federal
dollars toward a required 10 percent of their revenues that must be
from a non-Federal source. This has led some predatory for-profit
schools to deliberately and aggressively recruit veterans and even
provide false information to them regarding their programs, including
the expected level of student debt and what kinds of jobs would be
available to the students once they graduate. By closing that loophole
through the PROTECT Act, we can eliminate the incentive for these
schools to prey on veterans and prevent veterans from going into
significant debt for a credential or degree of little practical or
economic value.
Next, this legislation would add a new review process for for-profit
institutions that seek to convert to nonprofit or public status--
something they have been doing as a strategy to escape key
accountability requirements.
Our bill would also take steps to ensure that career education
programs actually prepare students for good-paying jobs because if
students invest thousands of dollars in their education, they should be
able to find a job that will help them pay back their loans.
The PROTECT Students Act would also codify the 2014 gainful
employment regulation that helps prevent students from enrolling in
low-quality programs that charge more than what a student can
reasonably pay back after they graduate. This provision requires
improvement by schools whose students are found to have too much debt
compared to their earnings, and it cuts off Federal financial aid for
those schools that don't improve. The measure also has the obvious
benefit of preventing Federal taxpayer dollars from being wasted on
worthless programs.
The PROTECT Students Act would help student borrowers who have been
cheated or defrauded by predatory institutions, including for-profit
colleges, by improving the process for borrowers to have their loans
forgiven if the school they attend engages in fraud.
This legislation would increase consumer protections by banning the
practice of mandatory arbitration, which has limited students' ability
to seek legal action if they have been defrauded.
These are just some of the vital steps the PROTECT Students Act would
take. This bill would be a strong step forward for both students--
including veterans and servicemembers--and taxpayers.
We are at a time when the Department of Education, led by Secretary
Betsy DeVos, is doing everything in its power to undermine protections
for students on these issues. Secretary DeVos has done a disservice to
students by hiring into the Department officials who have close ties
with companies that have defrauded students. They then, unsurprisingly,
have supported her mission of rolling back student protections in favor
of predatory companies. Secretary DeVos has worked to gut key consumer
protections and weakened relief for students who were victims of fraud.
This is unacceptable. By supporting the PROTECT Students Act, Members
of the Senate can send a message to Secretary DeVos that we will not
stand for these actions.
I want to take a moment to thank my friend and colleague, Senator
Durbin, for his consistent leadership on this issue. For years, Senator
Durbin has been sounding the alarm about the dangers of for-profit
colleges, introducing legislation, and taking to the Senate floor and
bringing much needed attention to this matter. It is time that more of
our colleagues listen to his calls to stop these predatory institutions
from taking advantage of students all across the country.
Senator Durbin, thank you again for leading on this issue. I am
thrilled that we have been able to work together to introduce the
PROTECT Students Act, and I look forward to working with you to pass
this legislation as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education
Act.
Thank you.
I yield the floor to my colleague from Illinois.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate Democratic whip.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from New
Hampshire for being my ally in showing real leadership on this issue.
As a member of the HELP Committee, you will be sitting there in those
key hearings when we discuss the reauthorization of higher education.
That will be our opportunity to bring in some of these reforms that
make a difference in terms of this industry of for-profit colleges and
universities. I thank you for that, and I join you in this PROTECT
Students Act, as I have come to the floor so many times to talk about
this sector.
Most Americans don't know what we mean by for-profit colleges and
universities. Who are they? Well, some of the familiar names are the
University of Phoenix, DeVry University and others like it, which
portray themselves as institutes of higher education, and in
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some respects, they bear similarity. Yet when it comes to the actual
performance of these schools, it is much different. Many families don't
know the difference.
I find in the city of Chicago, IL, that students--particularly when
they reach their junior and senior years--are inundated with all this
advertising on social media about for-profit colleges and universities.
I would say to Senator Hassan, there was a time in Washington before
she arrived where you could find television ads that showed a young
lady who appeared to be about 20 years old, in her pajamas, saying: I
am here in my pajamas going to college at a for-profit college and
university.
They tended to make it sound like it was a pretty easy formula. All
you needed to do was log on, and the next thing you knew, you had a
diploma, a certificate, and you were off for employment. That is not
the real-world of for-profit colleges and universities. The real world
is a much starker place.
I have often said that you can define this issue between for-profit
colleges and universities and non-profit and public universities and
colleges in America with two very simple numbers. This will be on the
final. The numbers are 9 and 34. For-profit colleges enroll 9 percent
of all postsecondary students. Nine percent go to for-profit schools.
Thirty-four percent of all Federal student loan defaults are students
from for-profit colleges and universities.
Nine percent of the students and 34 percent of the loan defaults.
What is going on here? The answer is very obvious, and it really tells
the story about for-profit colleges and universities.
They charge too much. All the surveys we looked at say their tuition
is higher than you might run into at a local community college or a
public university or a not-for-profit school. They charge too much
tuition.
Secondly, too many students drop out before they finish. They are in
so much debt, they can't continue.
Third, those who do finish and get a diploma find out it isn't worth
much. They don't really end up in a job where they can pay off their
student loans, so they stumble and fall despite their best efforts,
deep in debt from these for-profit colleges and universities. Along the
way, they learn something interesting: These credits they are
supposedly earning at the for-profit colleges and universities often
can't be transferred anywhere. No one recognizes them.
These students have been lured into something called a ``college'' or
``university,'' lured into deep debt, and if they finish, they find
they have something that isn't worth a job in the future. Senator
Hassan and I are trying to protect these families and these students
from this type of exploitation.
We know and I think most Americans know that going to college can be
an expensive experience, but it can be a life-changing experience for
the better. If you pick the right school and get yourself a college
education, you will be in a better position, in most cases, when it
comes to your future life. Right now, we are finding that when it comes
to these schools, there is a much different outcome.
Throughout this higher education debate, you are going to hear a
common refrain from this industry. They often say that different types
of institutions of higher education shouldn't be treated differently
under the law, that everybody should play by the same rules. They go on
to say that any regulations or requirements that apply only to for-
profit colleges discriminate on the basis of tax status.
Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos accused me of
discriminating based on tax status, for-profit versus nonprofit. I
couldn't care less, from my point of view, whether it is for-profit or
nonprofit; the question is, What are they giving to these students?
What are the students receiving for the money that is being paid?
In her final report to Congress, retired Department of Education
Inspector General Kathleen Tighe wrote: ``The [for-profit college]
sector continues to be a high-risk area for the department.'' She went
on to say that the industry's own practices and performances ``provide
a clear demonstration of the need for particular accountability.''
Let's start with the basics. As I said, 9 percent of the students; 34
percent of the student loan defaults. Students at for-profit colleges
graduate with an average debt of nearly $40,000; students at nonprofit
and public colleges and universities, $28,000. In 2014, more than half
of the top 25 schools whose students held the most cumulative student
loan debt were for-profit colleges. Eight of the top 10 students with
the most debt were for-profit colleges. The average cohort default rate
over 5 years at these eight colleges was 33 percent. Over 5 years, a
third of the students were going to default on their student loans.
The average, incidentally, for the two not-for-profit institutions in
the top ten was 6 percent. So, at the end of 5 years, one-third of the
students who graduated from for-profit schools in the top ten for
cumulative student debt had defaulted. For the students from the
nonprofit schools in the top ten for cumulative student debt, it was
only 6 percent. These for-profit schools are notorious for luring these
students and sometimes their families into debt, and then the students
can't find the jobs to pay off the debt.
A basic reminder: Of all of the debt you can incur in the United
States of America--think about it--that being for your home, your car,
your boat, whatever it happens to be--there is one category of debt you
can never discharge in bankruptcy: a student loan. You are going to
carry student loan debt with you for the rest of your life.
We have a case in which a grandmother literally cosigned a note so
her granddaughter could go to college, and the granddaughter defaulted
on the student loan. Guess what happened to the grandmother's Social
Security payment. The government came and took part of it in order to
pay off that student loan.
It never, ever goes away. It is a loan--a debt--for life. That is why
it is different. We can make a mistake on a home; we can lose a job or
have an illness in the family and default on a mortgage and have the
debt we owe discharged in bankruptcy, but it is not so when it comes to
student loans.
In a 2017 letter to Secretary DeVos and congressional leadership, 19
State attorneys general, led by then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa
Madigan, wrote: ``Over the past 15 years, millions of students have
been defrauded by unscrupulous for-profit postsecondary schools.''
These chief State law enforcement officers noted the specific risks
to students from the for-profit college sector.
The recent closures of so many of these schools have left these
students stranded. Imagine if your son or daughter were going to one of
these for-profit colleges or universities, and then it went out of
business. Would that mean you would have to pay off your student loan?
Technically, yes. In order to be relieved from your student loan, you
would have to submit a borrower defense claim to the U.S. Department of
Education.
How often do these schools fail? Let me read to you a list of some of
these for-profit colleges and universities that have gone failed:
Corinthian, ITT Tech, Education Corporation of America, Vatterott, and
Dream Center.
How many students who attended these schools were left high and dry
when the schools went out of business? There were 140,000 students. Of
the more than 218,000 borrowers who have sought discharges from the
Department of Education as a result of being defrauded by their
institutions, the vast majority have been students from for-profit
colleges.
The for-profit colleges promised them jobs that never materialized.
The for-profit colleges said: If you take the following course, you can
become a computer technician of some kind. It never happened. They were
defrauded by these schools. They signed up for the loans, and then the
schools went out of business. So here they are with the loans and no
jobs.
We have this borrower defense process by which the students can go
through the Federal Government to try to be relieved of their student
debt. Yet I can't understand this. The U.S. Department of Education is
not processing these students' borrower defense applications. When we
said to Secretary DeVos, ``Come on. Give these young kids a break.
Their lives are on hold until they figure out what has happened to
their student loan debt
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from their for-profit schools,'' she hasn't gotten around to it, and we
have been waiting patiently for that to happen. I thank Senator Hassan
for putting a finger on it.
The people who are running this Department of Education are former
executives of these for-profit schools. So, it's no surprise.
So, no, Madam Secretary. Meeting our obligation as lawmakers to focus
accountability and protections where there is the greatest risk to
students and taxpayers is not discriminating based on tax status; it is
acknowledging reality.
The bill we are talking about today doesn't target for-profit
colleges, and it doesn't seek to put an end to for-profit education. It
is not a witch hunt or a liberal conspiracy; it is a response to the
objective risks to students and taxpayers that the for-profit college
industry represents today.
The PROTECT Students Act would close the 90/10 loophole.
Incidentally, can you imagine that these are so-called for-profit
colleges and universities and that they are the most heavily federally
subsidized businesses in America? We took a look around. We looked at
defense contractors and everything we could think of. The highest level
of Federal subsidy goes to this industry.
Imagine, a student signs up. The student may first qualify for a Pell
grant of $6,000. The for-profit college takes that Federal money in.
Then the student still owes some debt. They say: Well, you need a
government loan. So the student borrows from the government. At that
point, all we have seen across the table are Federal dollars that are
directly out of the Treasury. The student still carries the debt, but
the money to this so-called private business is all straight out of the
Federal Treasury--hardly a hearty example of capitalism at work.
The 90/10 rule was designed to prevent for-profit colleges from
depending on more than 90 percent of their revenue coming straight from
the Federal Treasury. It didn't work. Unfortunately, a loophole in the
law only counts the Department of Education's title IV funds as Federal
revenue while counting billions from the Department of Veterans
Affairs' GI bill and the Department of Defense tuition assistance as
non-Federal funds.
Here is what it means: If you are serving in our military and are
entitled to GI bill education benefits that are going to help pay for
your education, for-profit colleges have a financial incentive to
aggressively target and recruit you. It turns out they can take
virtually 100 percent of their revenue directly from the Treasury by
enrolling large numbers of students eligible for Federal benefits that
are not included in the 90/10 rule. We think that is wrong. We think
the 90/10 rule should count these veterans' benefits and other Federal
education benefits as Federal funds.
I see there are others on the floor, and I am not going to make this
any longer. I will bring it to a close because Senator Hassan has
covered the elements of this bill that I think are very important.
To my friends who serve with me in the U.S. Senate, here is what it
boils down to: Do we care about these students and their families? Are
we worried about the fact that 9 percent of the postsecondary students
end up at for-profit schools and account for over one-third of all
student loan defaults? Are we willing to hold these schools accountable
and every school accountable so they treat students fairly?
Are we willing to say, for example, the University of Illinois has a
relationship with its students who enroll? The University of Illinois
does not have a mandatory arbitration clause, but many for-profit
schools do. What does it mean? If you feel you have been mistreated by
the school, those at the school will sit down and decide your fate
through an arbitration process, which students virtually always lose.
Most schools don't do that to their students, but these schools look at
them as cash-paying customers, and that is how they treat them when it
comes to arbitration.
There are a lot of things we can do in this bill to protect the
students who are currently being exploited. What is more important than
making sure these students don't get off to a bad start in life but are
treated fairly and honestly and not exploited at the expense of their
families and the expense of American taxpayers?
I thank Senator Hassan for being the lead sponsor of this
legislation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Electoral College
Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I want to comment briefly on the proposed
constitutional amendment to eliminate the electoral college that my
colleagues are introducing this week. It is just the latest radical
proposal by the Democrats to upend our constitutional system of
government.
Why all the sudden interest in these changes? It is very simple.
The Democrats and their media wing still can't get over that they
lost the 2016 election, so they have spent the last 2 years looking for
scapegoats. First, it was the collusion hoax, but the Mueller report
has put an end to that. Now they blame the Constitution itself and want
to eliminate the electoral college, which they claim robbed the so-
called popular vote winner of her rightful office.
Let's be clear about something up front: We have never had a
Presidential election with a popular vote winner or loser in the
genuine meaning of those words. It is not how we contest the
Presidency, and it never has been. Campaigns organize their entire
strategies around the electoral college. Guess what. Hillary Clinton
did too. She just didn't do it very well. For the losers to complain
afterward that they really won is like a football team that gets
outscored but says it won the game because it made more first downs or
like a basketball team that got outscored but says it won the game
because it made more free throws.
Yet let's suppose that we do change the rules of the game. Let's
suppose we get rid of the electoral college. What would we get?
Get ready for nationwide recounts and election contests. If you
thought Bush v. Gore was a circus or that California's ballot
harvesting operations were a fraud, wait until you see a nationwide
recount. Getting rid of the electoral college would also encourage
fringe third parties with all of the instability we see in European
parliamentary elections. Neither candidate received 50 percent of the
vote in 2016. Imagine an election in which a winner would not even get
40 percent of the vote. How would the Democrats respond to that?
Of course, getting rid of the electoral college could further reduce
the role of the States in our elections. The Founders believed,
rightfully, that the States were sovereign political communities that
had real interests and real views that deserved to have a voice in the
national government apart from simple, nationwide majority rule. The
Founders didn't want our vast continental Nation to be ruled like
colonies from a few coastal capitals. They wanted our one, true
national officeholder to understand and account for the diverse ways in
which we work and live and think.
Under the electoral college, which I hasten to add is just like in
the Senate, the States can express their will as States. Hawaiians get
to speak as Hawaiians about whom the President ought to be. The same
goes for Vermonters and Arkansans. Doing away with the electoral
college would be especially harmful to the small States while it would
concentrate power in big States and in a few megacities. So it is not
surprising to see Senators from California and New York and Illinois
supporting this radical proposal. They have obvious reasons to weaken
the smaller States.
I have to confess that I am a little surprised that my colleague from
Hawaii is joining their effort because it would relegate his small
island State to the status of a colony--ruled from afar by a few vast
cities on the mainland. Hawaii, with its 1.4 million people, would have
less say in our Presidential elections than would San Diego. It would
barely outpace Dallas, TX.
Politicians who support abolishing the electoral college say it would
break the supposed stranglehold that rural red States have on our
elections, but this isn't really a red or blue issue. Hawaii, Rhode
Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia all have a greater say
about who leads our country,
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thanks to the electoral college, and the last I checked, none of those
places are Republican strongholds nor does one party ever have a so-
called stranglehold on the electoral college. It is far from it. In the
1980s, people spoke about the Republicans' electoral college lock. In
more recent times, they have spoken about the Democratic Party's blue
wall in the electoral college.
My State and New Mexico, for instance, were fiercely contested in the
Bush era--not so much anymore. In 2008, Barack Obama won Pennsylvania's
20 electoral votes in a cakewalk. Eight years later, Donald Trump eked
out a victory in the Keystone State. Next year, Ohio might not be a
competitive Presidential election State, but Texas may be. Politics can
change fast, and the electoral college changes with it, which forces
candidates to consider our entire vast country. Without it, a candidate
could actually ignore Wisconsin, yet still win.
I should also point out that my colleague's amendment this week is
not the only proposal to scrap the electoral college. A number of
States have also signed on to a so-called interstate compact that would
require those States to ignore the express will of their voters and
award their electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote.
It is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I would
prefer to call it the ``Small State Suicide Compact.''
It is designed to circumvent the difficult process of amending our
Constitution, which of course means it is unconstitutional. There is
already a process for changing the Constitution. It is called the
amendment process.
So I will give some praise to my colleagues this week for filing a
constitutional amendment to change the electoral college legally, but I
would point out that the Democratic Party's willingness to bypass our
Constitution to eliminate the electoral college reveals that what is at
stake here is not really democratic principle but one single thing--
power, seizing it and holding on to it.
Me? I think I will stick with the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton
said of the electoral college: If it be not perfect, it is at least
excellent.
I am with Hamilton.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
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