Tens of thousands of former students who say they were swindled by for-profit colleges are being left in limbo as the Trump administration delays action on requests for loan forgiveness, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press. The Education Department is sitting on more than 65,000 unapproved claims as it rewrites Obama-era rules that sought to better protect students.
Alec Harris, a lawyer with Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School who is representing one such student – Sarah Dieffenbacher a single mother of four who owes $50,000 in student loans — said the inaction could put his client and her children on the street. “This is a Department of Education that has seemingly sided with industry and stacked the deck against former students of predatory for-profit schools every step of the way,” Harris said.