This is a scandal.

When Betsy DeVos was appointed as Secretary of Education, she held investments in the for-profit higher education sector, which is known for fraud, high attrition, and low graduation rates. Presumably, she divested, but it is not clear whether she did.

Now she has turned over the job of revising regulations of the for-profit colleges to former high-level executives from the same sector.

Does anyone doubt that their mission is to remove all constraints on these quasi-criminal enterprises that have defrauded millions of students and gotten away scot-free?

Education Department adviser Robert Eitel, hired by the Trump administration last February after four years in the for-profit college industry, played a role in suspending an Obama-era policy known as “borrower defense to repayment.” The rule made it easier for students, enticed into taking out five-figure loans on promises that they would get good jobs, to file for debt relief. It also allowed the government to recoup the losses from the schools.

Ultimately, those potentially most impacted include many predominantly low-income, and minority students disproportionately represented at for-profit colleges and often saddled with high student loans and facing poor job prospects.

Education policy changes involving for-profit colleges has been a touchy subject since Secretary Betsy DeVos, who entered office with investments tied to the for-profit college sector, took over the department following Trump’s election.

The revelations about Eitel’s engagement in borrower defense policy come on the heels of a New York Times report that the department has been dismantling a team investigating widespread abuses by for-profit colleges. Education spokeswoman Liz Hill told the Times the group shrunk because of attrition and said no new hires with ties to the for-profit college industry had influenced the group’s work.

Eitel, who had also worked as an Education Department attorney under President George W. Bush, isn’t the only for-profit college executive DeVos has brought into the Department. The secretary also drew ire when she tapped Julian Schmoke, Jr., a former dean at the for-profit college DeVry, to lead the department’s Student Aid Enforcement Unit last August.

There’s no indication Schmoke was involved in the delay of the borrower defense rule.

Eitel — a former vice president at two for-profit college operators, Bridgepoint Education and Career Education Corp. — joined the Trump administration in February as part of a so-called “beachhead team” formed to usher the agency through the transition.

For two months, he worked at the Education Department while on unpaid leave from Bridgepoint, according to financial disclosure forms. He formally gave up his position at Bridgepoint in April, when he was hired on a permanent basis as a senior adviser to DeVos.

Although Education Departments ethics officials maintain working on borrower defense wouldn’t have violated his ethics agreement, Eitel has up until now refused to say publicly whether he had a hand in the borrower defense delay.

Eitel’s Involvement in Borrower Defense

On June 14, DeVos announced she was suspending the borrower defense rule, arguing that under the rule, “all one had to do was raise his or her hands to be entitled to so-called free-money.”

Emails obtained by the executive branch watchdog group Democracy Forward and shared with ABC News show in the days leading up to the announcement, Eitel circulated borrower defense talking points to staffers, edited background documents, and even signed off on the official delay notice.

This is a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse. Or worse.

Is this Trump University’s Revenge?