FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Contact: Paydon Miller
(202) 734-6543 | paydon.miller@younginvincibles.org

Young Invincibles Hails the Introduction of the PROTECT Act

Washington, D.C. — Earlier today, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) introduced the Preventing Risky Operations from Threatening the Education and Career Trajectories of Students Act of 2019, or the PROTECT Act. The bill would, among other positive reform proposals, do the following:

• Close the GI Bill loophole that leaves veterans more susceptible to the practices of predatory for-profit colleges and require all for-profit schools to get a larger share of their revenue from private market sources;
• Codify the gainful employment rule that holds poor-performing career education programs accountable for the taxpayer dollars they receive;
• Codify the borrower defense rule that gives defrauded or misled students a pathway out of the debt they’ve incurred at failed and/or predatory institutions; and
• Ban mandatory arbitration clauses in enrollment contracts that prevent students from exercising their Constitutional right of access to the court system.

In response to today’s bill introduction, Reid Setzer, Director of Public Policy for Young Invincibles, released the following statement:

 

YI is supportive of the PROTECT Act. It contains a series of common sense reforms to improve consumer protections for students. As hundreds of thousands of students remain at risk from predatory for-profit colleges, proposals like the PROTECT Act can safeguard students against unscrupulous practices of, and poor quality educations provided by, unethical and ineffective for-profit colleges. We look forward to this proposal gaining support in Congress and being included in any HEA reauthorization proposal.