Yahoo Autos Elizabeth Warren wants Biden's Education Department to go beyond broad student-loan forgiveness and crack down on the institutions that cause borrowers' debt loads to spiral
Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the Education Department with recommendations to better protect student-loan borrowers.
She urged stronger oversight on for-profit institutions that engage in predatory behavior.
She also recommended oversight for OPM providers, and quick implementation of the gainful employment rule.
As millions of student-loan borrowers wait for debt relief, Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to make sure President Joe Biden isn't letting protections for those Americans fall off his radar.
On Monday, the Massachusetts Democrat sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona — exclusively viewed by Insider — regarding efforts the department should take to ensure borrowers are protected from predatory behavior. After Biden announced up to $20,000 in student-debt relief for federal borrowers in August, he also outlined steps the department will take to hold potentially predatory programs accountable for actions that could load students up with debt, and Warren has some ideas on how to enforce that oversight.
"As I offer support for your effort to identify low financial value programs that saddle students with mountains of debt that they have little hope of repaying, I also write to bring to your attention several other areas where the Department can and should strengthen accountability and oversight of institutions of higher education that too often leave students with insurmountable debts," Warren wrote.
For-profit crackdown
Her recommendations focused on bolstering oversight over for-profit schools and ensuring predatory schools do not have access to the federal financial aid program. As Warren wrote in the letter, for-profits "have a long record of engaging in deceptive and manipulative practices and aggressively recruiting vulnerable students into low quality, high-cost education and training programs that leave students with high amounts of student loan debt and a greater likelihood to default on their loans."
As Insider previously reported, for-profit schools have been under scrutiny by lawmakers like Warren for decades over allegations of misleading students into taking on more debt than they can afford to pay off. Biden's Education Department has reformed the borrower defense to repayment, which are claims students can file if they believe they were defrauded by the school they attended. If approved, their student loans would be discharged.
In her letter, Warren urged Cardona to ensure predatory schools cannot receive federal aid. She also reiterated her calls that the department hold executives of for-profit schools liable for costs that would normally fall on taxpayers when they shut down. The department released guidance earlier this month saying that would hold executives of private colleges financially liable for the cost of unpaid debts defrauded students took on.
