The Trump administration has
announced it will cancel $150 million in debt for certain students.
Some 15,000 former students whose
schools closed while they were in attendance will now have their debt erased,
the Education Department said Thursday. The department estimates that the
forgiven loans will add up to around $150 million.
"For them, it's going to be a
very nice Christmas present," said Clare McCann, deputy director of higher
education policy at think tank New America and a former Education Department
official.
The "closed
school discharge" allows people who attended schools that
shuttered and then didn't enroll in another college to have their federal
student loans automatically canceled after three years. The provision is part
of the "borrower defense" regulation put into force under the Obama
administration.
Since November 2013, nearly 3,600
schools have closed a campus or ceased operating altogether, according to the
National Student Legal Defense Network.
Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos had sought to delay the regulation, but a federal judge
ruled in September that her efforts were
unlawful. In October, the judge denied an industry group's request
to postpone the rule as well, and ordered that the regulation go into effect
immediately.
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