Chairman Scott: Partial Relief for Dream Center Students “Falls Well Short” of What Defrauded Borrowers Deserve
WASHINGTON – Chairman Bobby Scott (VA-03) issued the following statement after the Department of Education agreed to expand eligibility for closed school discharge to only a small portion of students defrauded by Dream Center, a defunct for-profit college chain.
“Over the past several months, the Committee presented clear evidence that the Department of Education and Dream Center schools knew that the for-profit chain was on the verge of closure but failed to notify existing and potential Dream Center students. Today’s announcement is an acknowledgement that the decision by Dream Center executives and the Education Department to communicate with each other, but not with the public, resulted in thousands of Dream Center students being defrauded.
“It is also an acknowledgement that the Department’s extraordinary step of granting so-called retroactive accreditation and retroactive non-profit status to Dream Center schools allowed millions of taxpayer dollars to flow to schools that were actively defrauding students.
“For a limited number of former Dream Center students, today’s announcement provides meaningful debt relief. But for the vast majority of defrauded students, this announcement cancels only a small portion of the loans they took out to attend a failing school. These students will continue to face an uphill battle to repay those loans without the benefit of a quality degree.
“Although the Department has finally taken a step in the right direction, this announcement falls well short of what Congress requested, and well short of what students deserve.”
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On March 13, 2019, 81 House Democrats signed a letter to Secretary DeVos calling on the Department of Education to expand the window of eligibility for closed school discharge for Dream Center students to October 2017.
Read more about the Committee’s oversight work regarding the abrupt closure of Dream Center schools.
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