DeVos Sued Amid New Evidence About Whether Her Agency Aided For-Profit Operator

Source: US News & World Report


Two lawsuits were filed on the same day House Democrats threatened to subpoena the education secretary.

By Lauren Camera, Senior Education Writer?Oct. 23, 2019, at 3:06 p.m.

TWO STUDENT ADVOCACY groups have filed separate lawsuits against Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, one alleging her Department of Education allowed an operator of for-profit schools to mislead students and sack them with debt they are now unable to repay, and another that accused her of continuing to refuse to discharge the student loan debt of borrowers previously enrolled in for-profit schools that abruptly shuttered.

The lawsuits were filed Tuesday, the same day House Democrats threatened to subpoena DeVos for obstructing their investigation into the department's role in allowing the operator of for-profit colleges to mislead students and continue operating the schools despite losing their accreditation.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by National Student Legal Defense Network is directly related to the subpoena issued by House Democrats. It alleges that the Education Department's actions "caused students at the schools to borrow money and waste months of their lives in pursuit of an education they did not know was unaccredited."

At issue is the department's handling of Dream Center Education Holdings, which bought about 100 for-profit schools from Education Management Corporation in 2017, just months before two of the schools lost full accreditation in January 2018.


Read more: https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-10-23/devos-sued-amid-new-evidence-about-whether-her-agency-aided-for-profit-operator