Education Department erasing debt of students defrauded at for-profit college

[DonViejo]

Source: The Hill


BY JORDAN WILLIAMS - 06/16/21 09:15 AM EDT

The Department of Education is erasing the debts of students who were defrauded at a for-profit college.

The agency said in a statement that it had approved $500 million in loan cancellation for 18,000 borrowers who were defrauded by ITT Technical Institute.

ITT is accused of misleading students on their likely employment prospects after graduation and the ability to transfer their credits to other schools.

The school, between 2005 and 2016, made “repeated and significant misrepresentations” to students about how much they could expect to earn and the jobs they could get after graduating, the agency said.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/558683-education-department-erasing-debt-of-students-defrauded-at-for-profit

[kimbutgar]

1. My husband's right wing nephew was defrauded by ITT he is almost finished paying off the loan

I guess he’ll blame Biden for doing this too late to help him.

[Coventina]

2. Their ads used to run non-stop here in Phoenix.

Glad to see the students getting some justice.

[NullTuples]

3. It feels like a piece of this story is missing

Specifically, repercussions for those who run the company ITT Educational Services, Inc.

When the parent company closed IIT Tech, the school had assets of $600 million.

[brush]

4. When DeVos was running Education for trump she was against this.

Guess she had friends who ran those scamming schools.

[SarcasticSatyr]

5. Didn't Devos set up a system to apply for loan forgiveness ..

that turned out to be almost impossible to qualify for? Was that Her, or am I thinking of a different program?

[brush]

6. Not sure, but that sounds like something she would do to make it impossible.

[madinmaryland]

8. That was Devos.

[Johnny2X2X]

7. I worked for ITT many years ago

Early 90s, took a 2nd job working for ITT. They had just started up their CAD program and kids were graduating, it was my job to contact design and engineering firms and get interviews for recent ITT grads. I was placed in a phone bank room with their recruiters.

Their recruiters were hard core sales people, I was in sales prior and I recognized their techniques of pressuring kids and parents into visits. They were looking for a certain mark, they wanted kids with average grades who had parents who never attended college. They'd say things like, "Don't you want to be something? This is a future for you." When it came to money, they'd say, "Don't worry, we'll take care of everything, you're going to get it all covered with financial aid." They never mentioned that the financial aid was Stafford Loans they had to pay back. Got to know the school pretty well. Below average instructors with little teaching experience teaching outdated technology on used and outdated gear.

Well, the first class had 37 grads who were "skilled" in AutoCad 12. Only 1 had a job in the field 12 months after graduation and was making $12 an hour. Second class had 50 grads and zero had gotten a job yet. So I called engineering firm after engineering firm all day long, 90% of them had the exact same response, "If we need Computer Aided Drafting, we'll just have one of our engineers learn a CAD program." 3 months of doing this, I helped get exactly 0 students a job, I got a couple of them interviews. And at the end of it, they were saddled with $50K or more in student debt for a certificate that was worthless to them.

Seeing them and their parents get guilted into signing the paperwork was something, it was hard core and dirty sales. These guys were working on commission and nothing was off limits to get kids into the building. They'd call kids "losers" for not agreeing to visit. They'd tell parents they don't care about their kid's future. It was beyond disgusting and I quit because of it.

Unreal that it was all legal and ripped off kids and taxpayers of untold $Billions.