He noted that many of the students were defrauded by predatory for-profit schools, which Ms. DeVos has been accused of favoring with her policies. Nine percent of high school graduates go to for-profit colleges and universities, but 34 percent of loan defaults belong to those students.

“No student should be defrauded, and if fraud is involved, there are consequences, and there will be consequences,” Ms. DeVos replied. “But we should not be judging institutions by their tax status. Let’s be very honest here; there are bad actors on both sides of the equation.”

She added, with some indignance, “Let’s talk about the nonprofits that are doing a bad job, that are subject to bribes, that are lying in order to improve their U.S. News and World Report statistics,” referring to the recent college admissions scandal rocking Ivy League and other elite institutions.

Since taking office, Ms. DeVos has tried to overhaul the 2016 process started by the Obama administration that was supposed to pave an easier road for students to secure loan relief after their colleges are found to have misled them with inflated claims of false promises of jobs. The Obama administration approved nearly 30,000 such claims, estimated at $450 million, in its last year in office. The Education Department approved 16,155 from Jan. 1, 2017 to December 31, 2018.

The Obama administration rewrote the borrower defense rule, which was virtually unknown until 2015, when two large for-profit chains, ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges, began to crumble. The new rule was supposed to take effect in 2017.

But Ms. DeVos delayed issuing what she said amounted to “free money” and has moved to narrow its scope to only forgive debts of students who, regardless of their schools’ actions, fail to secure gainful employment and can prove they were otherwise harmed.

A 2017 report from the department’s inspector general found that the Obama process had some flaws. Ms. DeVos instituted a tiered system to grant some borrowers partial relief, but those measures were struck down by the courts. The department then blew a deadline to rewrite the rules, which were supposed to go into force this year.