Toby Merrill directs the Project on Predatory Student Lending at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, where she is a Clinical Instructor in the Predatory Lending Clinic. The Project is the first legal services practice in the country focused solely on representing former students of the for-profit college industry. It brings litigation to make it legally and financially impossible for the predatory for-profit college industry to cheat students. The Project has sued the federal Department of Education for its failures to meet its legal obligation to police for-profit colleges, and to stop the perpetration and collection of fraudulent student loan debt. Toby has also brought her clients’ experiences to bear on federal and state policymaking. She founded the Project in 2012 as a Skadden Fellow, after a federal clerkship. She graduated from Harvard Law School and Yale College.
On a Friday night in October, the Department of Education delayed by two more years the implementation of rules issued by the Obama Administration that would have governed the process for considering students’ claims that they were defrauded by for-profit colleges. By prevailing on these claims, they would be entitled to discharge of the federal…
In a move with significant implications for federal civil rights enforcement, the Department of Education has halted investigations into several large for-profit institutions widely accused of defrauding students. This decision sends an even clearer message that the Department of Education stands on the side of corrupt corporations rather than with students. Its decision allows these…
