mnitnt ~tatfS ~tnatf 

President Barack Obama 

The White House 

1600 Pennsylvania A venue, NW 

Washington, D.C. 20500 

Dear Mr. President: 

WASHINGTON, DC 20510 

March 9, 2016 

Our nation's students are making incredible investments in higher education- and their futureevery day with the hope that they might secure their place in the middle class. While many 

schools are working in good faith to help their students succeed, recent cases have unfortunately 

highlighted that some schools have subjected students to unlawful, unfair, deceptive, and even 

abusive practices. These schools have put their pursuit of federal student loan dollars ahead of 

the best interests of their students, and their abuses undermine the vision you have laid out for 

higher education in America. When colleges break the rules, student loan borrowers should not 

be left to dig themselves out from under a mountain of debt they cannot repay. We are writing to 

urge you to provide fair and equitable debt relief to the victims of these violations. 

When a college engages in misconduct or announces it will close, many students drop out or find 

themselves stuck with a worthless degree and limited job prospects. With students juggling 

work, school, and family responsibilities, the path to getting back on track with their education 

can be daunting. We have heard countless stories of students in this teITible situation, especially 

in the wake of the dramatic collapse of Corinthian Colleges, but there are many more students 

who attended other colleges that have engaged in similar practices. The U.S. Department of 

Education ("the Department") has the opportunity tlu·ough the current rulemaking to develop a 

strong and comprehensive regulation that both protects student borrowers and provides them 

with the debt relief they so urgently deserve. Unfortunately, we are concerned that the 

Department's current proposal does not seem to ensure the process is fair for students. 

The Department should streamline "bmTower defense to repayment" by granting automatic relief 

to groups of students who have been victims of predatory practices. These borrowers should not 

have to hire attorneys or go through process where they would each have to apply for relief and 

prove evidence of misconduct and individual harm, particularly in instances where federal or 

state agencies already have evidence of unlawful activity. Such a process would be incredibly 

burdensome for the very students who need the most help and would stack the deck in favor of 

schools that can afford an army of lawyers. Instead, the Department should provide students with 

an immediate notice that they will receive a discharge of their federal loans when evidence exists 

that their college has engaged in deceptive or abusive practices. And, the regulation should 

capture the full range of state evidence of these practices, not just cases where a formal judgment 

has been entered against the school. 

1 
Further, a borrower's debt relief should not be linked to the federal government's ability to 

recoup funds from the school for any loan discharges. The Administration can address concerns 

regarding the cost of ''borrower defense to repayment" by stepping up enforcement against 

schools that have been shown to deceive students and by aggressively limiting bad actors' access 

to federal aid dollars on the front end. The Administration should further strengthen the 

regulation by cracking down on the use of forced arbitration agreements by schools that receive 

federal student aid. Forced arbitration not only denies students their day in court to fight 

deceptive practices and misconduct, but also hampers the ability of agencies to uncover 

wrongdoing earlier by preventing student complaints from ever becoming public. 

We are concerned that the draft rules propose a statute of limitations on a borrowers' ability to 

receive debt relief. Many students do not know that their school has misled or defrauded them 

until many years after the federal or state authorities have completed their investigations 

revealing the misconduct. Furthermore, there is no similar statute of limitations to collect on a 

student's federal loan debt, and these loans are not currently dischargeable in bankruptcy. It 

would be unfair to set an arbitrary time limit on a student's ability to get the relief they deserve 

after being taken advantage of. 

As your Administration works on these proposed regulations, we hope that you will keep in mind 

students who are struggling every day to keep up with student debt that hasn't given them the 

promise of a better life. These students were investing in their future, but their schools' deceptive 

and predatory practices have left them in urgent need of relief. Thank you for your prompt 

attention to this matter. 

PATTY MURRAY 

United States Senator 

RICHARD J. DURBIN 

United States Senator 

HA 

Uni 

2 

United States Senator 

CHARLES 

~~ E. SCHUMER 

United States Senator 
~ i,u.:_ 

T L¢vfMY 'f/ALD WIN 

United States Senator 

-;;; L::;;z ~ c. :u ~ / 

United States Senator 

United States Senator 

r&:?cAS ' United States Senator 

\..,.,,..#

'l)~~-ct3 1DIANNE FEINSTEIN ~ ~ United States Senator 

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND 

United States Senator 

MAZIE 

~-K~ K. ONO United States Senator 

United 

PA States Senator ~ 

U

rnnited States Senator LE~jk. 

}z:..~ A.BOOKER United States Senator 

ffpurn United States Senator 

United States Senator 

A 

~~United States Senator ~ 

3 

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI 

United States Senator 

-· 
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY 

United States Senator 

United States Senator 

~ 

BEJl:n~ ....- ~ United States Senator 

JEANNE SHAHEEN 

</:.6R~ TOM UDALL 

United States Senator 

United States Senator 

BILL NELSON 

United States Senator 

IY:: ilRJANSCIIATZ 09~~ 

4 

Unite tates Senator 

DEBBIE STABENOW 

United States Senator 

United States Senator