Investigative writer David Dayen, writing in “The New Republic” describes the variety of ways that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is protecting predatory for-profit “colleges” while allowing them to stiff the students they cheated.

“Imagine a car dealer sold you a lemon. You sue to get your money back. But the judge discovers that you managed to get yourself around most of the time, despite the bum vehicle. You only missed 10 percent of your appointments, so the judge orders that you are entitled to 10 percent of the price of the car.

“That’s essentially what Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced last week for students defrauded by for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges. Victims of the corrupt diploma mill will not have their student loans discharged; instead, they will get a portion of relief based on their current income. The more professional ingenuity they showed despite being defrauded by Corinthian, the less money they will get in restitution.

“It’s yet another way in which DeVos has acted in favor of the for-profit college industry, which was left for dead after several major companies’ deceptive schemes finally caught up with them. Not only is DeVos shielding the industry from the consequences of those misdeeds, she’s rewriting the rules to legalize those practices.

“Corinthian targeted single mothers and returning veterans with high-pressure recruitment, lying about job placement statistics to make enrollment seem like a good bet. Once signed up, Corinthian would pile on tens of thousands of dollars of unanticipated debt and deliver a substandard educational experience. One student alleged that some final exams involved board games and that he got course credit from an “internship” working at a fast-food restaurant. In the end, the useless degrees did not help, and sometimes even hurt, graduates’ job prospects.

“Corinthian shut down in April 2015, after the Education Department fined it $30 million for misrepresenting job placement rates. State and federal regulators eventually won billions in fraud judgments against the bankrupt firm.

“A coalition of students refused to pay their debts to Corinthian, citing a clause in their loan contracts allowing “defense to repayment” if they were defrauded. Even under Obama, the Education Department made loan relief unnecessarily burdensome, forcing students to prove the fraud instead of instituting blanket relief. Thousands of cases were left to DeVos to adjudicate, delaying forgiveness of billions of dollars.

“And DeVos did almost nothing about them. In the final year of the Obama administration, 27,986 of 46,274 debt cancellation claims were dealt with; in the first several months under DeVos, only two claims were addressed—and both were denied. By early December, the backlog had grown to 95,000 unprocessed claims, mostly from Corinthian students. Interest accrued on the loans while students waited in limbo for a ruling. The Education Department even used debt collectors to garnish wages and seize tax refunds on some borrowers. Several state attorneys general sued the department to deal with the backlog.

“DeVos finally announced a resolution last week, approving 12,900 “defense to repayment” applications and denying 8,600 others. But the new relief plan was noteworthy. The Education Department will now compare the earnings of an applicant for debt relief to the average earnings of students who took similar vocational courses. So if you trained at Corinthian as a medical technician, the agency will look at your salary compared to other medical technicians, and deliver relief on a sliding scale. Students making 50 percent of the average rate of their program will get 50 percent of their debt cancelled; those making 60 percent will get 40 percent cancelled; and so on.”

In case you wonder which side DeVos is on, consider the fact that she hired a former dean from DeVry University to place fraud cases in higher education. He should know. DeVry was ordered to pay a $100 Million fine for misleading students. But that was before DeVos took charge.

This is not a minor problem. Nearly 5 Million students have been cheated by phony “colleges” and “universities,” whose degrees are worthless.

The Trump administration can’t be expected to make demands on this corrupt industry, since Trump himself operated one of them and was forced to repay $25 million to angry students.