Into the teeth of the student loan crisis walked Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. She’s already making it worse.

The problem goes far beyond DeVos’ embarrassing ignorance on display at her confirmation hearing, Her main qualification for Trump’s cabinet appears to have been her status as a Republican billionaire-donor. She knows nothing about basic educational policy, the decades-old Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, fraud by for-profit colleges and graduate schools exploiting students, or any other subject about which an aspiring Secretary of Education should have at least some rudimentary knowledge.

Why DeVos?

None of DeVos’ shortcomings kept Trump Party senators from confirming her. With an expertise in lobbying, she pushed Michigan money away from public education and into charter schools that had little or no accountability for their dismal performance. And Michigan now leads all states in the number of charter schools operated for a profit.

For law students, DeVos’ actions in Michigan are more than just a troubling analogy. In an earlier post, I wrote about Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, which has a marginal law school. His newest assignment is leading Trump’s task force on deregulating higher education. Most law schools — especially those whose graduates have the toughest time finding meaningful JD-required jobs — love the idea of deregulating an already dysfunctional market that props them up.

Law School Winners

If marginal schools had to operate in a completely competitive market, many would have closed their doors long ago. As they lowered admission standards and admitted students who produced declining bar passage rates, federal student loan dollars have kept them afloat. Trump embraces deregulation as a panacea. But that’s because, as with so many things, he lacks an understanding of how the absence of regulation would make the currently dysfunctional market in legal education even worse.

Only federal student loans keep the worst law schools in business. Educational debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, and federal guarantees add another layer of protection for schools that don’t deserve it. Meanwhile, schools themselves have no accountability for their students’ poor bar passage rates or dismal employment prospects.

The Obama administration had been making life more difficult for schools that exploit students and leave them deeply in debt from which many will never recover. Specifically, schools that grossly underperformed for their students faced the prospect of losing eligibility for the federal student loan program. Charlotte Law School felt that heat directly.

The Other Shoes Dropped

Less than a week after Falwell’s task force appointment, Vice President Mike Pence’s tie-breaking vote in the Senate confirmed Devos as Secretary of Education. Immediately, she chose advisers:

— Robert S. Eitel, an attorney, is on unpaid leave of absence from his job as a top lawyer for Bridgepoint Education, Inc., a for-profit college operator whose stock is up 40 percent since November 9. Bridgepoint faces multiple government investigations, including one that ended in a $30 million settlement with the federal Consumer Finance Protection Bureau over deceptive student lending.

— Until July 2016, Taylor Hansen was a lobbyist for the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, the largest trade group of for-profit colleges. In June 2016, his mission was to eliminate the government’s “gainful employment” rule, which can cost a school federal funding if too many of its recent graduates fail to repay their student loans. But then Hansen became a DeVos adviser and a member of the Education Department’s “beachhead” team — a group of temporary employees that doesn’t require Senate approval. On March 6, the Department announced a three-month delay in deadlines associated with the gainful employment rule.

On March 14, ProPublica reported on Hansen’s unseemly status. On March 20, Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent the ProPublica article with a letter to DeVos asking for an explanation. Hansen resigned the same day.

Bottom line: If you’re counting on help in dealing with the worsening student loan crisis, count the Trump administration out.