NEW: Congressional Democrats are coming out swinging against the Education Department’s plan to issue a declaration that companies collecting federal student loans are off-limits for state regulators.
As POLITICO reported [https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/26/education-department-student-loans-state-regulators-366033] on Monday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is preparing to issue a “notice of interpretation” that argues that only the federal government, not the states, has the authority to regulate federal student loan servicers.
Rep. Joe Crowley, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, accused the Trump administration of “weakening protections for millions of students who have been victims of fraud or predatory behavior.” Crowley (D-N.Y.) added that Trump and DeVos “must stop these attacks on our students and give states the ability to protect their residents against fraud and abuse.”
Two Democrats on the House education committee – Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon and Mark Takano of California – issued similar statements criticizing the department’s draft directive.
Former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray criticized the proposal on Twitter. “US Department of Education now wants to preempt states from monitoring and overseeing student loan servicers. That is wrong. They want to do nothing while stopping the states from doing something,” wrote Cordray [https://twitter.com/RichCordray/status/968899888766504960], who is running for governor of Ohio.
Meanwhile, the current head of the CFPB, Mick Mulvaney, told state attorneys general on Wednesday that they should play a bigger role in enforcement actions in general. “We are going to be looking at the [state] regulators and the states attorney[s] general for a lot more leadership when it comes to enforcement,” Mulvaney told a gathering of attorneys general in Washington.
Politico Morning Education
NEW: The Education Department is gearing up over the coming months to decide the fate of a controversial accreditor of for-profit colleges. Department officials have formally begun the process of deciding whether to reinstate the federal powers of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which the Obama administration terminated in 2016, accusing the organization of approving too many troubled for-profit schools.
As the accreditor mounts its comeback bid, it’s also been getting some help from the Trump administration, according to emails obtained by POLITICO under the Freedom of Information Act. The help comes as ACICS is racing up against a June deadline by which the dozens of for-profit schools that relied on its stamp of approval, and haven’t won approval from another accreditor, will lose their access to federal funding.
Department officials last year rescheduled a meeting of the federal accreditation panel to accommodate ACICS, the emails show. A senior career department official last summer floated moving the National Advisory Committee for Institutional Quality and Integrity meeting from June to May to speed up the decision-making timeline on ACICS. “This would be a difficult (compressed) timeline” for department staffers, the career official wrote of the plan, but added that “it is doable.” Robert Eitel, a top adviser to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and a former for-profit college executive, responded: “ACICS is interested in this model (file by October 1 with a May hearing).”
Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill defended the department’s move to quickly consider ACICS’ application to help some of the 10,000 students who she said attend “one of the many remaining schools accredited by ACICS.” She added: “These students will have their educational programs and their lives interrupted if their schools have not found a new accreditor by June. That’s why it’s important to give ACICS the opportunity to submit a new application that can be promptly considered.”
The emails also show that in the weeks before ACICS submitted its application for reinstatement to the department, the Office of General Counsel made a “recommendation” to the accreditor on how it could avoid having those application materials be made public. A career official wrote to ACICS that the general counsel’s office had recommended “ACICS provide correspondence in conjunction with the petition to note any documents or exhibits that ACICS would consider privileged or sensitive in response to a FOIA request received by the Department.” ACICS President Michelle Edwards wrote in response that “we will gladly include correspondence with regard to any documents or exhibits we consider privileged or sensitive.”
Emails released by the department:
https://static.politico.com/89/05/d79095f347e190c77896a81caa4b/combined-acics-foia3.pdf
Politico Morning Education
