On Wednesday, one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), is expected to sue U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for repealing a rule meant to protect student loan borrowers from for-profit and career-focused schools that graduate them with too much debt and limited job prospects.
Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.7 million-member union, says the lawsuit’s message is clear: “Protect the students of the United States of America — not the for-profit [schools] that are making a buck off of them.”
The 2014 rule that DeVos repealed, known as “gainful employment,” served as a warning to for-profit colleges and any school that offers career certificate programs: If graduates don’t earn enough income to repay their student debts, schools could lose access to federal aid.
Because many of these programs derive the bulk of their revenue from federal student loans and grants, it was a potentially devastating threat. So devastating that, Weingarten says, “the rule worked. What started happening is that these places — not just the for-profits, but anyone who was covered by this — they started cleaning up their act.”