Debt Relief Expanded For Former Corinthian College Students

The U.S. Department of Education made the announcement after confirming claims made in 2013 by California Attorney General Kamala Harris that the schools routinely inflated job prospects to lure unsuspecting recruits – and their federal student loan dollars – into their programs.

The closed for-profit statewide college chain, with connections to Southern California, misrepresented their job placement rates to enrolled and prospective students, state and federal investigators said.

The 85,000 WyoTech and Everest students join roughly 40,000 former students of Heald College campuses who are already eligible for an automatic loan discharge. At WyoTech schools in Sacramento, the analysis finds that the job placement rate Corinthian trumpeted to students and the actual success rate varied widely.

“These students worked hard, they paid for school and took on debt”, Harris said Tuesday.

In one case, an Everest University online program advertised a job placement rate of 95% for students who completed an associate degree in business, but the actual placement rates for students from that program was just 14%, the government’s investigation found. This suggests that the company was misrepresenting the quality of the education it was offering.

“While we can’t give students back the time they invested in Corinthian, the least we can do is give them the debt relief they deserve”, John King, who will become secretary of education later this year, told reporters on Tuesday.

Everest and WyoTech were owned by Corinthian Colleges, a now-defunct career college giant based in Santa Ana.

“It’s not like it’s this really easy accessible thing”, said Herrine.

In addition, the company agreed to automatically forgive debts owed by former students who dropped out within 45 days of enrollment with fewer than 24 hours of credits between January 2006 and December 31, 2014.

Ted Mitchell, undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Education, said today that as of November 4 the department has received more than 10,000 closed school discharge claims and approved more than 5,000 of them. Students must still file an application at the Department of Education’s website.

Still, critics say the Department’s offer of debt relief is too little too late.

“Our office will continue to work with the department to help make sure this process is as streamlined as possible for students to apply for relief as quickly as possible”, Harris said. It had also received 6,400 borrower-defense claims.