Betsy DeVos Ordered to Cancel $150 Million in Student Loans After Being Sued for Delays

The Secretary was ordered by a judge two months ago to implement an Obama-era law.

cancelled debt
Betsy DeVos has been ordered to cancel the debt of 15,000 borrowers. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
AFP/Getty Images

Despite Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s year-long battle against the Obama-era rule, the Department of Education must now wipe out the debt of over 15,000 students.

It’s called Borrower Defense to Repayment, which was designed to help students who were cheated by for-profit colleges get relief on their student loans, CNN reported. The cancellations total about $150 million.

A federal judge ordered immediate implementation of the rule two months ago when he decided to side with attorneys general from 18 states and the District of Columbia who sued DeVos for delaying it. DeVos was actively trying to rewrite the rule, according to CNN.

The students benefiting form the canceled loans were enrolled in schools that closed while they were there, like the defunct for-profit Corinthian Colleges. Those institutions closed in 2015 after being fined $30 million by the government for misleading students.

“This is a good first step, but it’s not good enough,” senior member of the Senate committee on education, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, said in a statement. “I call on Secretary DeVos to abandon her attempts to rewrite the borrower defense rule to let for-profit colleges off the hook and instead fully implement the current rule and provide relief to more than 100,000 borrowers who were cheated out of their education and savings.”

The InsideHook Newsletter.

News, advice and insights for the most interesting person in the room.