Education
BEAVERTON, OR [12/16/19] — Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), a member of the House Education and Science Committees, announced that Sanjana Ilango of Westview High School won the Congressional App Challenge for Oregon's First Congressional District.
A group of 165 Democrats, led by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), wrote a letter last week to DeVos citing concerns with ne hiring at the Office of Federal Student Aid and what they said was a failure to hire enough employees in the Office for Civil Rights. "The Department's refusal to adequately staff OCR is inexcusable, especially when compared with its rapid, unrestrained hiring at FSA," they wrote.
U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, whose district covers much of northwest Oregon including parts of Portland, was one of several Democratic members of the House Education Committee to press Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on the agency's decision to restrict debt relief for former students of shuttered for-profit colleges.
More than 200,000 students say despite the promise of a job post-graduation from mostly for-profit colleges, they have nothing to show for it except mountains of debt.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos faced scrutiny from lawmakers on Capitol Hill for the Department of Education's implementation of a loan forgiveness rule aimed to help defrauded students called Borrower Defense.
"These students were misled and cheated and the fact that some of them may be making money doesn't mean they weren't defrauded," said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat from Oregon.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on Thursday defended her decision to move ahead with partial loan forgiveness for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, pushing back on criticism from Democrats over her approach.
We're closing in on year three since the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) was tasked with canceling federal student loans for thousands of consumers. These students were victimized by predatory for-profit colleges like Corinthian Colleges, which, at its peak, operated more than 100 campuses in the U.S. and Canada.
Tensions ran high at a House Education and Labor Committee hearing on Thursday, where Democrats questioned U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about her implementation of the borrower's defense rule, the provision that allows loan forgiveness for defrauded students.