Statement on Extended Closed School Discharges for ITT Borrowers | Press Release
Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it will make $1.1 billion in closed school discharges available to an additional 115,000 borrowers who attended the now-defunct ITT Technical Institute (ITT). According to the Department, this segment of borrowers includes those who did not complete their degree or credential and left ITT on or after March 31, 2008.
The Project on Predatory Student Lending represents the class of more than 700,000 former ITT students in the ITT bankruptcy, Villalba et al v ITT. The bankruptcy court has recognized that all 700,000+ students were scammed by ITT and are the true creditors.
Statement from Eileen Connor, Director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending
"This is good news for these 115,000 ITT borrowers, however, the exact reasoning used by the Department in expanding this look back period also demonstrates why all ITT loans need to be cancelled.One of ITT’s notorious scam tactics was enrolling students in a worthless associate’s program, and once a student completed that program, ITT convinced them to enroll in a bachelor’s program, which students were often unable to complete. Many of our clients experienced this particular scheme, talked into multiple degrees and a mountain debt. It is unclear from today’s announcement whether all of their loans, including from the associate’s degree, would be cancelled.It has been 5 years since ITT shut down among overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing, yet the Department still has not addressed the more than 700,000 borrowers with over $3 billion in fraudulent debt from ITT. We are again calling on the Department to do what is right when it sees evidence of widespread fraud. Our clients should not have to wait another day for the cancellation of loans that never should have been made in the first place."
The Project on Predatory Student Lending has represented more than one million former for-profit college students and won landmark cases against the Department of Education and predatory colleges.
About the Project on Predatory Student Lending
Established in 2012, the Project on Predatory Student Lending represents former students of predatory for-profit colleges. Its mission is to litigate to make it legally and financially impossible for federally-funded predatory schools to cheat students and taxpayers. The Project has brought a wide variety of cases on behalf of former students of for-profit colleges. It has sued the federal Department of Education for its failures to meet its legal obligation to police this industry and stop the perpetration and collection of fraudulent student loan debt.