Warren Urges DeVos Be Held Accountable to Protect Students

It is time to hold Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos accountable, because the policies she is pursuing are jeopardizing the educational and financial futures of millions of students, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced in a CNN commentary published on Wednesday.

The timing could not be more critical, because the Department of Education has released a budget that would severely harm the student aid program by making it much more difficult for students to afford college and to repay their loans, Warren wrote.

Making matters worse, the senator charged that the Department of Education currently "administers the trillion-dollar loan program for the financial benefit of nearly everyone except the students it is supposed to serve."

Warren said that she is qualified to honestly evaluate the situation, because she also criticized the department when it was under Democratic control, such as insisting to make sure federal funds were not going to fraudulent schools and that students were not being ripped off by those trying to take advantage of their situation.

The senator said progress was made in the Obama administration for a fairer and more efficient student loan program by putting it under the direction of the Department of Education, thus eliminating middlemen and cutting out the profits that private banks milked from the system, a move, she said, "that required standing up to some very powerful banks and private businesses that wanted to keep on skimming."

But Warren warned that DeVos has reversed the progress made and is "actively undermining efforts to protect students from being cheated."

She said that two of DeVos' first hirings at the department were men with "deep connections to institutions that make big money by abusing the student aid program and preying on students," saying that although "the revolving door that shuttles people between government jobs and the corporations they police is [almost always] corrosive, it is rarely this brazen."

Tightening the oversight by Congress and regular citizens is particularly critical now, Warren said, because DeVos must appoint the next head of the trillion-dollar federal student aid office, and the public should make sure it is not someone who "prioritizes the student loan industry and predatory colleges above students."

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