[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 192 (Tuesday, December 3, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6797-S6799]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  For-Profit Colleges and Universities

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, a few years ago, a woman who works in my 
office in Chicago--who actually cleans up the office in the evenings--
was so excited when she learned that her daughter had been accepted to 
college. It was a dream come true for a woman who had immigrated to the 
United States, taken some of the hardest, most menial manual jobs in 
the hopes that her daughter, one day, would have a better life.
  She sat down with my chief of staff in Chicago to tell her about the 
details, and immediately, we knew there was much more to the story. Her 
daughter had been accepted not just to another

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college or university; she had been accepted to a for-profit college in 
the Chicagoland area. The for-profit colleges and universities are 
notorious. The numbers tell the story, two separate numbers: 9 percent 
of all postsecondary students go attend for-profit colleges and 
universities--University of Phoenix, DeVry, very well-known names--9 
percent of students go to those schools, but 33 percent of all of the 
federal student loan defaults are students from for-profit colleges and 
universities.
  Why? Why is this one category of higher education so notorious for 
students starting and ending up deeply in debt to the point where they 
cannot pay it back? Well, the reasons are simple and very obvious. They 
overcharge the students, and they undereducate them. They make promises 
that are wild and cannot be kept. They give them courses of doubtful 
value and do not tell them that any credits that they have earned at 
these for-profit schools cannot be transferred to city colleges, 
community colleges, or universities.
  So the students are stuck. At some point, some will quit piling on 
the debt and just basically walk away. All the promises and all the 
jobs and careers that were supposed to come from this are never going 
to materialize. It is a classic fraud, and sadly, our government is 
part of that fraud. You see, we recognize the accreditation of those 
schools. We tell that cleaning lady and her family that these are good 
schools and universities. The Federal Government does that and offers 
Federal loans to these students to go to these schools.
  Is it any wonder that the students and their families think they are 
doing the right thing for their future? The Federal Government gave a 
stamp of approval. Well, what happens when those schools reach the end 
of the line? What happens when those same for-profit colleges and 
universities go bankrupt? The students are in a terrible position, 
deeply in debt with courses that are meaningless, with their lives 
compromised, and nowhere to turn.
  We decided long ago to create an opportunity for these students to 
get out of this dilemma--one that we share in by accrediting these 
schools--something called the ``borrower defense,'' which allows these 
students, if they were defrauded, to discharge their federal student 
loans and get on with their lives.
  Today, hundreds of thousands of students--who were defrauded by their 
for-profit colleges--are desperately waiting for Secretary of Education 
Betsy DeVos to discharge their Federal student loans under a provision 
in Federal law known as borrower defense. Congress created the borrower 
defense provision to ensure students' lives are not ruined by their 
schools' misconduct and deception.
  In 2014, for-profit Corinthian Colleges collapsed. It left more than 
70,000 students nationwide with worthless credits they could not 
transfer and mounds of student debt. The students had been lured into 
those Corinthian schools with false promises, inflated placement rates 
and income projections. We know that for a fact. We have the data to 
show they were lying to the students about what graduation from 
Corinthian could mean in their lives.
  Over the last 5 or 6 years, nearly every other major for-profit 
college, nearly every one of these have faced Federal or State lawsuits 
and investigations for predatory practices similar to Corinthian 
Colleges. The result has been hundreds of thousands of defrauded 
students across America who are seeking discharges to which we say they 
are entitled under Federal law.
  Secretary Betsy DeVos has allowed more than 200,000 borrower defense 
applications to pile up at the Department, nearly 11,000 from my own 
State of Illinois. But listen to this, Secretary DeVos has not approved 
a single claim for more than a year, 200,000 applications stacking up 
at the Department of Education, not one approved.
  So who are some of these borrowers that are languishing? What is 
their story? Let me tell you about two of them.
  One is Jessica from Tucson, AZ. Jessica attended the Art Institute of 
Tucson from 2009 to 2012. It was owned by the failed for-profit 
Education Management Corporation, EDMC. Heartbreakingly, Jessica says: 
``I have experienced unbelievable amounts of stress and depression due 
to this situation. I have been placed on anti-depressants and anti-
anxiety medication over the years and been through therapy . . . I have 
self-harmed and contemplated suicide, because I feel so trapped and 
unable to recover or move forward. I have a general feeling of 
worthlessness, because I feel like my potential has been squandered.''
  She went to the Art Institute of Tucson, and her experience has led 
her to this desperate situation. She tried to harm herself. Instead of 
a bright future, she is left with a mountain of debt and nothing to 
show for it but deep financial and psychological pain. She says, 
``Every aspect of her life has been affected.''
  And so, is Secretary Betsy DeVos trying to help Jessica? No. 
Secretary DeVos is making it worse. Jessica submitted her borrower 
defense application almost 4 years ago in 2016. She has waited for this 
period of time to hear anything from the Department of Education. What 
is their excuse? I mean, if someone writes a letter to my office and 
does not get a reply and they come back to me and say, Are you going to 
answer this, Durbin, we send a reply. We try to do it promptly with 
everybody.
  How can Secretary DeVos be holding these things up for years, while 
the students see the mountain of debt growing? As she waits, Jessica's 
loans are in forbearance, where they continue to gather interest, 
meaning that the total amount owed continues to grow. She is just 1 of 
4,518 borrowers from Arizona who are stuck waiting for Secretary DeVos 
to use the authority that Congress gave her to discharge fraudulent 
loans
  I also want to tell you about Jonathan from Colorado--3,600 defrauded 
borrowers are waiting for relief. Jonathan from Westminster, CO, 
attended DeVry University--sadly a Chicago-based for-profit school--
studying to be an electronics engineer.
  He is a father and a husband who was trying to provide more for his 
family, so he took out student loans that sounded like an investment. 
He currently owes almost $100,000 in outstanding Federal student loans 
from attending DeVry, twice what he was told his education would cost.
  Of his debt, Jonathan says, ``My credit has been destroyed. I 
couldn't repay these loans in two lifetimes, even if my degree had any 
value to employers.'' Sadly, it doesn't. Employers don't even recognize 
his degree.

  Jonathan says:

       My student loans are the millstone around my family. The 
     debt I owe has made my kids not want to attend college at 
     all. They see no value in it; their own father has an 
     engineering degree but he can't get hired anywhere because 
     his school was a scam.

  Those are the words of Jonathan from Colorado.
  So not only has this fraudulent school taken away his future by 
burdening him with a worthless degree and piles of debt; in many ways, 
it affects his children's future.
  Jonathan applied for a borrower defense discharge in 2017, nearly 3 
years ago. He has been waiting to hear from Secretary Betsy DeVos. 
Secretary DeVos's failure to provide him with relief, he says, ``has 
caused [him] to lose faith that the government will actually protect 
students like [him].''
  Secretary DeVos has cruelly ignored defrauded borrowers like Jessica 
and Jonathan, but what is more is that she is trying to make it almost 
impossible for future borrowers like them to secure the relief that 
Congress intended by rewriting the rules.
  In August, Secretary DeVos released a new version of the borrower 
defense rule that places unreasonable burdens on borrowers to attain 
relief. The result is that the Department estimates the DeVos rule will 
deny nearly $11 billion in relief to borrowers compared to the current 
rule.
  In September, I introduced a resolution in the Senate to overturn the 
DeVos borrower defense rule. Forty-two of my colleagues have joined me 
in cosponsoring it. I plan to bring the resolution to a vote on the 
Senate floor where it only needs a simple majority to pass. At that 
time, my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will have a choice: Will 
they stand with Secretary DeVos's actions--or, I should say, lack of 
actions for 3 or 4 years--will they deny help to defrauded students, or 
will

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they stand with young people like Jessica and Jonathan, trying to get 
their lives back together and trying to get Congress to implement the 
one law it passed that could help them? It is a choice that seems 
pretty easy for most American people when they hear this scenario 
described to them.
  A recent opinion piece in the Anchorage Daily News criticized 
Secretary DeVos for siding with ``for-profit colleges that have 
defrauded students'' and ``illegally [denying] student loan debt relief 
to thousands of students.'' Even in Alaska, hundreds of borrowers are 
waiting for borrower defense discharges.
  Nationally, Americans agree that these defrauded borrowers deserve 
relief. In a 2016 New America poll, 78 percent of Americans said that 
students should have their Federal student loan debt discharged if 
their school deceived them. That is pretty basic, isn't it? If you were 
cheated, you ought to be taken care of.
  When you break the numbers down by party, 87 percent of Democrats and 
71 percent of Republicans--vast majorities--supported relief for these 
students. So when it comes time to vote on my resolution to overturn 
the DeVos borrower defense rule denying relief to defrauded borrowers, 
I hope my colleagues will stand with students and the American people.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.