DEBT/EDUCATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Trump administration is considering making it harder for former college students who accuse schools of fraudulent behavior to have their student loans forgiven.
The draft plan, which the Education Department has circulated among members of an assessment panel, would replace an Obama administration policy designed to reimburse students who say their colleges lied to them while recruiting, such as by inflating their graduates’ earnings.
Under the proposed plan, former students would have to show that their colleges had an ‘intent to deceive’ or knowingly provided false information, and submit evidence that is ‘clear and convincing.’
Those standards would be more stringent than a ‘borrower defense’ rule set out in the Obama administration policy. That policy, released in early 2017 but never implemented, required that former students document false advertising but didn’t require proof of an intent to deceive. And students only needed to make their case by a ‘preponderance of the evidence,’ a lower legal threshold.
The proposed change is part of a push by the Trump administration to relax regulations imposed under President Barack Obama in areas from health care to financial services to the environment.”
-Michelle Hackman and Josh Mitchell, “Trump Administration Seeks Curbs on Student-Loan Forgiveness,” The Wall Street Journal online, Jan. 3, 2018 07:52pm