Eileen Connor

After years working in “dead-end” jobs, Morgan Marler decided to pursue a degree that would help her start a career working with computers...Marler is one of the nearly 900 student-loan borrowers who say they were scammed by their schools and are awaiting an answer from the Department of Education as to whether they’ll have their federal student-loan debt wiped away. These borrowers have been waiting an average of 958 days for a response...Perhaps most “alarming,” according to Eileen Connor, the director of litigation at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School, which is representing the borrowers: 96% of these borrowers say they’re lives are worse off now than before they attended a for-profit college. “It’s a wake up call for everyone about how we are managing the federal student-loan program,” Connor said. “It’s not what we like to think and what we tell people about how higher education will make your life better.”

After years working in “dead-end” jobs, Morgan Marler decided to pursue a degree that would help her start a career working with computers. In 2013, Marler enrolled at ITT Technical Institutes feeling convinced they’d help her land a job once she graduated. ... Marler graduated from the school in 2016 with an associate’s degree in information technology. But just a few months later, ITT shut down amid claims the school misled students about job placement and graduation rates. ... In November 2017, she filed a claim asking the government to wipe away her debt under a law that allows borrowers to have their loans cancelled if they’ve been defrauded by their school. Nearly two years later, still waiting for an answer. ... Perhaps most “alarming,” according to Eileen Connor, the director of litigation at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School, which is representing the borrowers: 96% of these borrowers say they’re lives are worse off now than before they attended a for-profit college. “It’s a wake up call for everyone about how we are managing the federal student-loan program,” Connor said. “It’s not what we like to think and what we tell people about how higher education will make your life better.”

Alicia Davis feels like she was scammed. As a student at Florida Metropolitan University from 2006 to 2008, she said she was told the cost of her online criminal justice program would be covered by Pell grants and scholarships. She was told her credits could be transferred to other schools. Graduating from the school, a subsidiary of the for-profit Corinthian Colleges, would lead to a job and a decent wage. None of it was true, said Davis, who accrued more than $22,000 in student loans from FMU. The 36-year-old is now one of seven plaintiffs suing the U.S. Department of Education and its chief, Betsy DeVos, for allegedly failing to offer relief to more than 158,000 student-loan borrowers who claim they were defrauded by for-profit colleges...Harvard Law School's Project on Predatory Student Lending, which filed the case on behalf of the plaintiffs, said the Department of Education has illegally halted processing forgiveness applications under DeVos's tenure, neither rejecting nor approving any claims. According to the complaint, the department "intentionally adopted a policy of inaction and obfuscation." The Education Department last approved a borrower-defense application in June 2018. "The Department of Education has knowingly enabled for-profit colleges to defraud students," Eileen Connor, legal director at the Project on Predatory Student Lending, said in a statement. "It recklessly continued to act as a loan broker for disreputable schools despite clear records of abuse and misconduct," Connor added.

The U.S. Department of Education is violating federal law by refusing to make decisions on applications to cancel federal loans from more than 158,000 students who attended for-profit colleges, a new proposed class action claims. The Massachusetts-based Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School announced the former students' suit on Tuesday, the latest in a string of cases against the department and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over Obama-era student loan protections. The complaint, filed in California federal court, says that even though students are able to cancel any federal loans they might have if their schools defraud them, the department hasn’t made a decision since June of last year on any applications to cancel those loans. “The Department of Education has knowingly enabled for-profit colleges to defraud students,” Eileen Connor, the legal director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, which is affiliated with the Legal Services Center, said in a statement. “It recklessly continued to act as a loan broker for disreputable schools despite clear records of abuse and misconduct, and now the department refuses to acknowledge the damage it has done by issuing these predatory loans to students, at taxpayers’ expense.”

A class action lawsuit filed in California Tuesday claims the U.S. Department of Education is "intentionally" not processing debt relief claims by students who were defrauded by for-profit colleges. "They don't have any timetable to resolve these claims and it's pretty clear that they don't have any intention to," said Eileen Connor, legal director for the Project on Predatory Student Lending at the Legal Services Center at Harvard Law School, which brought the suit with the California-based legal service organization Housing and Economic Rights Advocates.

After working as a bartender for years, Alicia Davis decided in 2006 that she wanted to take steps towards starting a career in law enforcement by getting her bachelor’s degree. It’s a decision that’s haunted her ever since...Now Davis is fighting back. She’s part of a class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday, accusing the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, and the Department of Education of illegally stalling their decision on at least 158,000 borrower defense claims filed by people like Davis...“The law is really clear, but the Department of Education has ignored their claims,” said Eileen Connor, legal director at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which is representing the borrowers. “Students are coming forward today to say enough is enough.”

Courts have sided repeatedly with student loan borrowers demanding the U.S. Education Department process their applications for debt relief, yet more than 180,000 people are still waiting for a decision. Now, some of them are again turning to the courts for help. On Tuesday, seven borrowers sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her agency after the department failed to take action on their applications, some of which have languished for years...“It’s not like they’re working through the backlog and it’s just taking time. The department doesn’t think they have to do anything with these claims, and that’s why people are coming forward,” said Eileen Connor, an attorney representing the borrowers. “What they want is for the court to tell the department: ‘You have to do something. You can deny them. You can grant them. But you have to do something.’”...Connor, director of litigation at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School, argues that the court injunction does not prevent the Education Department from creating a new methodology to deny claims or grant full relief. The Project on Predatory Student Lending brought the California case.

A long-delayed federal rule intended to protect student loan borrowers who were defrauded by their schools went into effect on Tuesday, after a judge rejected an industry challenge and the Education Department ended efforts to stall it any longer...“We’re really gratified,” said Eileen Connor, the director of litigation at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which represented several student borrowers who challenged the department’s delay. “These regulations have a lot of critical protections in them for student borrowers and taxpayers.”

...The states “spent significant resources trying to ensure that people who were eligible for loan cancellation because of Corinthian fraud would get it,” said Eileen Connor, the director of Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, one of the organizations representing the borrowers. “It’s just really outrageous that the Department really capriciously turned away from that.”

...“It’s just a new stand for the department to be taking, that the states aren’t its partner — that the states are its enemy,” said Eileen Connor, director of litigation at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has temporarily halted relieving the debt of some student borrowers who were defrauded by the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges, after a federal judge found her department misused earnings data to calculate loan forgiveness...The halt came after Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of Federal District Court in San Francisco found that the department had violated the Privacy Act by sharing student borrower information, such as Social Security numbers and birth dates, with the Social Security Administration to obtain earnings data. The judge ordered the Education Department to end the practice and its collection of Corinthian student debts...Judge Kim’s ruling resulted from a class-action lawsuit filed by the Project on Predatory Student Lending of the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School and the group Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, which challenged Ms. DeVos’s partial-relief system shortly after it was announced. They argued that the new policy was arbitrary, capricious and illegal...“The court has already ruled that the Department of Education must immediately stop using its illegal partial denial rule,” said Eileen Connor, litigation director for the Project on Predatory Student Lending.

A federal judge has blocked Education Secretary Besty DeVos’ plan to force more than 60,000 defrauded students to repay loans for education programs that some borrowers describe as “worthless.”...Plaintiffs’ lawyer Eileen Connor, of the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, praised the ruling as an important step in providing relief to students who the school duped into wasting valuable time and money on a “valueless” education. “These people were targeted specifically because they were economically vulnerable,” Connor said in an interview. “The department’s delay and denial of loan cancellation is harming them in a way that can’t be repaired, and that harm accrues on a daily basis.”

An op-ed by Toby Merrill and Eileen Connor. For years, predatory for-profit colleges have exploited the promise of higher education, cheating students and leaving them in mountains of debt they never should have had. Making it worse, the industry has been enabled by a Department of Education that has made excuse after excuse about why it can not step in to help students. Last week, the Education Department ran out of excuses.

The Education Department’s plan to provide only partial loan forgiveness to some students defrauded by for-profit colleges could reduce overall payments by about 60 percent, according to a preliminary analysis obtained by The Associated Press...The department said some students will now be getting only partial loan forgiveness to make the process fair and protect taxpayers from excessive costs...Eileen Connor, a litigator at Harvard University’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which has represented hundreds of defrauded Corinthian students, criticized the projections. “I think that is terrible. It’s another example of the Department of Education picking the side of fraudulent schools and not doing right by those who have been hurt by them,” Connor said.

A federal judge approved a settlement Wednesday allowing former students at ITT Technical Institute to participate in the bankruptcy proceedings of its parent company, giving them a shot at the remaining assets of one of the nation’s largest for-profit college operators...“Students are now stakeholders in this bankruptcy,” said Eileen Connor, attorney for the students...Connor, who is also an attorney at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School, said Wednesday’s settlement builds a case for the Education Department to grant full relief.

The Education Department is abandoning the Obama administration’s practice of wiping out the loans for all students who were swindled by the now-defunct Corinthian college chain. Under President Barack Obama, tens of thousands of students deceived by the for-profit school had more than $550 million in student loans canceled in full. But Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced Wednesday she is putting a new process in place that she says will be more efficient. The department will now look at average income in order to determine the value of a student’s education. Then it will decide whether to forgive the loan partially or in full. Eileen Connor, a litigator at Harvard University’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, called the decision “unlawful and arbitrary.”

The Education Department is considering only partially forgiving federal loans for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, according to department officials, abandoning the Obama administration's policy of erasing that debt..."Anything other than full cancellation is not a valid outcome," said Eileen Connor, a litigator at Harvard University's Project on Predatory Student Lending, which has represented hundreds of defrauded students of the now-shuttered Corinthian Colleges. "The nature of the wrong that was done to them, the harm is even bigger than the loans that they have."

They said they were defrauded, and now they want a seat at the table. Last week, a group of former ITT Tech students moved to establish themselves as creditors in the school's bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Indiana...The Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School is representing the students. Eileen Connor, director of litigation for the center's Project on Predatory Student Lending, is the lead attorney representing the students. She was unavailable for comment.

It seems only right that victims of predatory for-profit education companies should have their student loans forgiven. After all, in addition to being left with mountains of debt, former students have worthless degrees from schools that no longer exist, such as those once operated by the defunct Corinthian Colleges or ITT Educational Services. Because taxpayers backed most of these loans, however, the Department of Education has been loath to forgive them. So it was gratifying to see five former ITT students take matters into their own hands this week by petitioning a federal bankruptcy court to consider loan forgiveness as part of the company’s liquidation...on Jan. 3, lawyers at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School filed to intervene in ITT’s liquidation, which is currently being overseen by James M. Carr, a federal bankruptcy judge in the Southern District of Indiana...“We’re trying all the angles, all the avenues,” Toby Merrill, founder and director of the Harvard project, said in an interview...“All of these students have filed their own claims with the Education Department,” said Eileen Connor, director of litigation at the Harvard project. “But the Department has been sitting on them, and they are not visible in any way.”