Some borrowers who have been scammed by their schools will only be eligible for partial relief from their student loans under Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education.

On Wednesday, the Department provided the most insight yet into how it plans to treat student loan borrowers who have filed borrower defense claims — essentially an application for relief from federal student loans for borrowers who have been misled by their schools. Wednesday’s announcement was specific to borrowers who filed claims and attended Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit college chain that filed for bankruptcy in 2015 amid claims it used inflated job placement and graduation rates to lure students. The Department will use the same model to evaluate future claims from borrowers at other schools, but the exact calculations may vary depending on the specifics of the school and program.

Some Corinthian borrowers whose claims for discharge were approved will only receive partial relief under the new system. Those who attended Corinthian programs where the average earnings are 50% or more of the earnings of a typical graduate in a comparable program will be eligible for only a partial relief of their debts on a sliding scale. Borrowers who earned 49% or less will receive full relief.

“ ‘This approach uses a series of tricks to deny full debt relief for students who were defrauded by their colleges — colleges that the Department of Education told them it was good to enroll in.’ ” — David Halperin, an attorney and for-profit college critic

The Department also announced that it approved 12,900 claims for relief, which includes some partial relief, from Corinthian students and denied 8,600. Officials said that some of the applications for relief that were denied were received during the current administration, but some had been flagged for denial by the previous administration.

Wednesday’s announcement is stoking ire among borrower advocates. “This approach uses a series of tricks to deny full debt relief for students who were defrauded by their colleges — colleges that the Department of Education told them it was good to enroll in,” said David Halperin, an attorney and for-profit college critic.

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The announcement is the latest development in a controversy that’s been brewing for years over borrower defense claims. Though the defense to repayment law has been on the books since the 1990s, few borrowers used it to claim relief until a few years ago, when for-profit college chain Corinthian Colleges collapsed amid claims it used inflated job placement and graduation rates to lure students. Fueled by pressure from borrowers and activists, the Obama administration developed a clearer procedure borrowers could use to apply for relief.

But over the past several months, DeVos’s Department of Education has taken steps to delay the implementation of that process. Officials have also convened a group of stakeholders in hopes of rewriting the Obama-era rule. Borrower advocates and some states attorneys general have derided the delays and the Department is facing multiple lawsuits over her efforts to delay the rule — including a class-action suit filed Wednesday.

The new process for evaluating claims announced by the Department Wednesday would do little to help many borrowers harmed by their schools, Halperin said. Borrowers who received a lousy education could be denied full relief because they managed to find a decent-paying job in a field unrelated to what they studied, Halperin said. “The idea that there’s no harm no foul,” if a student is making some money, “doesn’t really make sense,” Halperin said. “The student was defrauded or otherwise abused by the college. The idea that that can be cured by a student earning a modest income seems misplaced.”

Halperin said he’s particularly troubled by the notion of partial federal relief, given all that borrowers lose when they attend a college with poor outcomes. Often the students are working parents who pay for child care, some portion of their education out of pocket and/or through a private loan and give up valuable time in the labor force — in addition to taking on federal loans to enroll in these programs. “It is disgraceful to then nickel and dime them on the federal loan portion of it,” he said.

The Department framed the partial loan relief process differently. In an email accompanying the announcement, Department officials described their approach to evaluating claims as “improved” over the “all or nothing” approach used by the last administration.

In a statement, DeVos said the Department has “been working to get this right for students since day one,” and argued that the new process “protects taxpayers from being forced to shoulder massive costs that may be unjustified.”

But Halperin said he worries the more lax rule will wind up being more expensive for taxpayers. If the Department is able to avoid giving full relief to students who were scammed by their schools, there’s little incentive for the agency to prevent rule-breaking schools from receiving money from the federal financial aid program, he said. Which could make it likely that this cycle of students claiming they were scammed by such schools — and needing the government to pay them compensation — will continue.

“While it seems like this stingy formula is saving taxpayers money, in the long run it will cost taxpayers billions,” Halperin said.