By Leada Gore
Some 560,000 borrowers who attended a now-closed for-profit college will have $5.8 billion in student loans canceled, the Department of Education announced.
The cancellation of loans associated with Corinthian College represents the largest one-time debt forgiveness by the Department of Education.
The new action ensures all borrowers who attended from Corinthian’s founding in 1995 through its closure in April 2015 will get debt relief, CNN reported. Some of its former students were already eligible through existing programs.
“While our actions today will relieve Corinthian Colleges’ victims of their burdens, the Department of Education is actively ramping up oversight to better protect today’s students from tactics and make sure that for-profit institutions – and the corporations that own them – never again get away with such abuse,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said.
At its peak in 2010, Corinthian College had more than 110,000 students at 105 campuses. The colleges closed in 2015 after federal officials determined that they had misled protective students about the ability to transfer students and falsified its job placement rates.
About 2,293 former students at Corinthian Colleges in Alabama were found eligible to have their student loans forgiven as part of 2017 settlement. Students who attended the schools – Everest Institute, Everest University and Wyotech in Alabama – from 2010 to 2014 had their federal loan payments refunded, according to Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.
