It starts with a chain of for-profit colleges that ran a scam operation: administrators targeted low-income and minority applicants, made a bunch of outlandish claims about what the schools could do for their career prospects, and encouraged them to get student loans from the federal government. This, naturally, generated quite a bit of money for the for-profit colleges.
It did not, however, benefit the students, who ended up with significant debts. Some of those students received worthless degrees, while others didn't even get that because the schools closed their doors without notice before the students could graduate.
The Obama administration investigated and agreed that these students who'd been taken advantage of deserved a break. In fact, the Obama administration determined that it'd be fair to simply forgive the loan debts of the for-profit colleges' apparent victims.
Problem solved? It was, right up until Donald Trump took office, Senate Republicans confirmed Betsy DeVos as the secretary of Education, and the Trump administration decided those victims still owed the federal government lots of money.
Even if Republicans were unfazed by Menashi's ugly record, it seemed possible that they'd care about his role in devising an illegal Dept. of Education scheme.
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