Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has decided to go against the Obama administration's Department of Education’s plan to help reform student debt collection.
Last year, the Department of Education sent two memorandums to the department’s Federal Student Aid office, which proposed new guidelines for debt collection companies that would provide more personalized plans and a larger range of services in order to prevent more student loan defaults. On April 11th, Devos sent a memorandum asking the department to withdraw these two memorandums, effectively relieving restrictions from the student loan industry.
The Editorial Board of the New York Times responded to these memorandums withdrawals saying, “The department is doing the loan industry’s bidding at a time when student debt has crippled a generation financially.”
Former Secretary of Education and a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education Paul Reville joined Boston Public Radio Thursday to discuss DeVos’ decisions to withdraw the Obama administration's reforms.
“The Obama administration had tried to stop this preying on folks who are already carrying heavy debt loads ... they are allowing predatory practices here,” said Reville. “You’ve got student and high education debt equaling credit card debt. It is a major crisis,” he said.
During his campaign, Trump spoke about lowering student debt and even offered plans on his campaign website that offered solutions to the student debt crisis. Reville believes that Trump is now moving in the opposite direction to what he proclaimed to care about.
“We have a president who headed a college who’s been sued and who has been accused of some of the worst abuses of taking advantages of students,” said Reville. “This is sort of a fox in charge of the hen house phenomenon.”
Click above to listen to our interview with Paul Reville.
