Trump Education Secretary DeVos Concludes Four-Year Effort Weakening Student Loan And Civil Rights Protections, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Department Of Education Was Working For Students

The Filing

WASHINGTON. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos completed her four-year tenure Wednesday after methodically dismantling the rules her department had spent years constructing to protect students from predatory lenders, fraudulent colleges, and complaints of sexual misconduct, resolving the long-standing concern that the federal Department of Education was operating, at least intermittently, on behalf of the nation's students.

The secretary, a billionaire heiress who had never held a job inside a public school before her confirmation, departed having rescinded the gainful employment rule that withdrew federal funding from colleges whose graduates could not earn enough to repay their loans, rewritten the borrower-defense rule that allowed defrauded students to apply for loan forgiveness, and replaced Title IX guidance that had directed colleges to investigate complaints of sexual misconduct on campus.

Department officials confirmed that the rewritten borrower-defense rule, which the previous administration had used to discharge the debts of students enrolled at the now-collapsed Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute, was narrowed so significantly that it approved almost no applications during the secretary's tenure, a figure that one anonymous senior aide called "the kind of bureaucratic restraint we set out to achieve."

Under the secretary's leadership, the department also withdrew dozens of Obama-era civil rights guidance documents, sharply reduced investigations into systemic discrimination in school districts, sued to block state laws regulating loan servicers, and proposed redirecting billions in federal pandemic relief from public schools toward private and religious institutions whose tuition the same families could not otherwise afford.

A second administration source, granted anonymity to characterize the department's broader strategy, described the four-year project as "restoring a level playing field," adding that the field now included for-profit colleges that had previously been ineligible for federal funds, lenders that had previously faced enforcement actions, and accused harassers who had previously faced campus disciplinary hearings.

At press time, the secretary was preparing to depart for the private sector, where she was widely expected to continue her four-decade campaign on behalf of school choice, having spent her years in government ensuring that the choice now included fewer rules to choose from.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who fulfilled a deregulatory campaign promise to conservative donors and the school-choice movement that helped finance his coalition.
§The Federalist Society and conservative legal organizations, whose preferred Title IX procedural framework was adopted as binding federal regulation.
§For-profit college chains and their executives, who regained access to federal loan dollars under loosened accountability after the prior administration's crackdown shuttered Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute.
§Student loan servicers including Navient, whose practices faced reduced federal oversight and whose state-level enforcement was actively undermined by federal legal positions.
§Private and religious K-12 schools, which gained expanded eligibility for federal funds traditionally reserved for public education.
§The DeVos family's decades-long political and educational network, whose preferred regulatory framework was implemented as federal policy.
§Accused parties in campus sexual misconduct proceedings, who benefited from procedural changes narrowing the conduct schools were required to investigate.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment