Education Department officials today announced a plan to grant partial debt relief to defrauded student borrowers based on the earnings of graduates who attended a particular program of study.

It’s a significant departure for the department, which under the Obama administration had granted full relief to borrowers, such as the thousands of former Corinthian Colleges students who sought to discharge their student loans after the collapse of the for-profit chain in 2015.

Department officials said the new policy will specifically address findings for former Corinthian students. The same analysis for partial relief will be used for borrowers who attended other programs going forward, depending on the number of claims from a given institution.

Borrower defense to repayment, until recently a little-used provision of the Higher Education Act, allows borrowers to seek forgiveness of federal student loan debt when they are defrauded or misled by their institution. The Obama administration granted thousands of those claims and, in its final months, made an aggressive push for applications from more eligible borrowers who attended failed for-profit programs such as the ones Corinthian operated.

Read the source article on defrauded borrowers by Andrew Kreighbaum at Inside Higher Ed