Education Secretary Betsy DeVos moved Wednesday to make it harder for students who say they were defrauded by colleges to erase their debts, rolling back Obama-era regulations that for-profit colleges saw as threatening their survival, The Washington Post reported. The proposed rules published Wednesday require students to prove that schools knowingly deceived them if they want their federal loans canceled. And it scuttled an Obama administration provision that allowed similar claims to be processed as a group. Instead, students will have to prove their claims individually. The rules are DeVos’s rewrite of an Obama-era regulation published in 2016 and part of that administration’s crackdown on for-profit colleges that critics say prey on vulnerable students. In ways big and small, the new version makes it harder for students to win debt forgiveness. The department aims to publish a final rule by Nov. 1 so that it can take effect for loans originating after July 1, 2019. The agency will allow 30 days for public comments on the proposal.
