The Trump administration is delaying action on requests for student loan forgiveness as it rewrites Obama-era rules that had sought to better protect students.
The for-profit college industry has wanted those rules revised.
The move by the Education Department puts in legal limbo tens of thousands of former students who say they were swindled by for-profit colleges. The department already has more than 65,000 unapproved claims.
The rules written during the Obama administration would have forbidden schools from forcing students to sign agreements that waived their right to sue. Defrauded students would have faced a quicker path to get their loans erased, and schools, not taxpayers, could have been held responsible for the costs.
The Education Department says it needs up to six months to decide the claims.
