Imagine a car dealer sold you a lemon. You sue to get your money back. But the judge discovers that you managed to get yourself around most of the time, despite the bum vehicle. You only missed 10 percent of your appointments, so the judge orders that you are entitled to 10 percent of the price of the car.

That’s essentially what Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced last week for students defrauded by for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges. Victims of the corrupt diploma mill will not have their student loans discharged; instead, they will get a portion of relief based on their current income. The more professional ingenuity they showed despite being defrauded by Corinthian, the less money they will get in restitution.

It’s yet another way in which DeVos has acted in favor of the for-profit college industry, which was left for dead after several major companies’ deceptive schemes finally caught up with them. Not only is DeVos shielding the industry from the consequences of those misdeeds, she’s rewriting the rules to legalize those practices.

Corinthian targeted single mothers and returning veterans with high-pressure recruitment, lying about job placement statistics to make enrollment seem like a good bet. Once signed up, Corinthian would pile on tens of thousands of dollars of unanticipated debt and deliver a substandard educational experience. One student alleged that some final exams involved board games and that he got course credit from an “internship” working at a fast-food restaurant. In the end, the useless degrees did not help, and sometimes even hurt, graduates’ job prospects.

Corinthian shut down in April 2015, after the Education Department fined it $30 million for misrepresenting job placement rates. State and federal regulators eventually won billions in fraud judgments against the bankrupt firm.