Update | ITT Bankruptcy Settlement Does More for Cheated Students Than DeVos

When the final order of the ITT bankruptcy settlement became effective this month, the court approved cancellation of every dollar of student debt held by the for-profit college and allowed the students’ $1.5 billion claim as unsecured creditors.Despite the clarity of the school’s wrongdoing, the Department of Education continues to collect on the billions of dollars of student loans from people who were cheated by ITT, and ignore their applications to cancel those loans.

This means that a bankruptcy settlement has now done more for the cheated students of ITT Tech than the federal government has ever done for them.

Students who were cheated by their school are legally entitled to have their loans canceled, under the rule called defense to repayment. But so far, only 33 ITT students have received federal student loan cancellation based on their defenses to repayment. Over 14,000 applications from ITT students remain outstanding and hundreds of thousands more cheated students haven’t submitted claims. Thousands of students filed applications in 2016, which means they have been waiting for over three years for the Department to decide their fate.In the meantime, student borrowers are suffering. One is Lorenzo Boyland, a Veteran who attended ITT for computer science, but left with no education, no job, and a worthless piece of paper that cost him over $34,000 in debt.“I work hard,” said Lorenzo. “I served my country. I went to college to build a better life. ITT profited off of my aspirations and left me nothing. ITT’s actions were wrong and illegal. It perpetrated a fraud on hundreds of thousands of students. ITT put us all in a hole without a shovel to dig ourselves out.”ITT was a giant corporate scam. The students know it, the courts know it, and the Department of Education knows it too. It is past time for the Department of Education to cancel the federal student loans from this predatory for-profit school.

How can you help?

• Call your representatives in Congress and tell them you think these debts should be canceled. You can find your local Senators and Representatives here.
• Spread the word on Twitter or Facebook and tell the Department (@usedgov) to cancel all ITT debts.

 If you are a former ITT student, or know someone who attended, click here for information on how to apply for loan cancellation and to stay up-to-date on the bankruptcy.