The Obama administration gave hope to tens of thousands of former students defrauded by for-profit colleges that they wouldn’t be saddled with huge debt for useless degrees. The Trump administration is ripping that hope away—and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is hiring former for-profit college executives to write those hope-destroying policies. Robert Eitel, one such for-profit college industry veteran, turns out to have played a significant role in suspending “borrower defense to repayment,” a policy that let students get debt relief if they’d been sold lies about their job prospects and let the government get back some of the losses involved.
Eitel was evasive about his role in suspending the policy when questioned by House Democrats back in November, telling Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) that “To say that it was my idea would not be accurate” and saying that “I cannot comment on negotiated rulemaking that is occurring presently” when asked directly if he was involved in rewriting the rule. But ABC News got its hands on the proof:
"I have attached the draft backgrounder... together with draft talking points," he wrote in one email to department staff about the borrower defense delay in June.
"I had approved a prior version but want to make sure that it reads the same," he said in another that same month.
What do you know. Eitel had his hands all over a policy change that will directly benefit the industry he spent the last several years working for. According to an Education Department spokesperson, that’s just fine, as long as Eitel doesn’t personally intervene in a specific case involving his former employer. After all, this is the Trump Education Department helmed by Betsy DeVos. Putting big business over students is what they do—and the harm to students is no concern at all.