I think it is important for people to understand how this process is really working, rather than how it is supposed to work in some ideal world where the law and facts actually matter.
The only thing the Department of Education is looking at when someone submits a DTR is the program of study they attended at a particular school, and they dates they were there. That is literally it. The rest of the paperwork they are making you fill out is just window dressing. It literally doesn’t matter. You could submit a photo of the president of your school holding up a big sign that says “we are defrauding our students” and it wouldn’t matter.
The Department of Education already has a list of programs/schools and dates for programs that were previously found to violate the law. This was done largely through state-led investigations by AG offices, but some was Department findings from the previous administrations. DeVos & Trump would love nothing more than to deny everyone’s claim, but they can’t deny the claims for the people who attended programs that courts or the Department have already determined violated the law. So that is all they are looking at. The program you attended and the dates you were there. If that is on their list of lawbreaking programs/dates, you get at least some debt discharged. If not, they are denying the claims outright without caring at all if what you are telling them is true.
That is how this works folks. This is all about power.
They are going to try to get away with it. There will be legal challenges that work their way through the courts over the next several years. With luck, those will result in some additional discharges as the courts force the Department of Education to abide by the law to a greater degree than they currently are. But this will be a long process and a very imperfect result. Not everyone will get their debts discharged that way.
What we need to do is see DTR for what it is. It is a limited tool, that we have used to the greatest extent we can, against people who are working in bad faith who have a TON of power to ignore the law and ignore the facts and get away with it.
If we are really going to win discharges for everyone we need to think beyond the DTR process. We need to organize and build power, enough power to force mass cancelation for everyone through.
That is going to take a ton of time and a ton of work. But we can totally do it and we can win. No one is going to save us except ourselves.