Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III urged the U.S. Department of Education to cancel federal student loan debt for some students who attended ITT Technical Institute. The now defunct for-profit school defrauded thousands of individuals by encouraging them to enroll and borrow loans based on false and misleading information about the value of an ITT degree.
The borrower defense application that a bipartisan coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia filed today includes students who attended ITT Tech between at least 2007 and 2011.
Federal law permits the Department of Education to forgive federal student loans when borrowers were deceived in obtaining them.
The attorneys general are demanding full relief to ITT students, including refunding payments already made on those loans.
“In Tennessee, we had hundreds of students simply trying to improve their lives through an education at ITT Tech and instead were harmed,” said General Slatery. “This Office will continue to work on their behalf enforcing out state’s consumer protection laws.”
Based on a 2012 congressional report, ITT enrolled roughly 282,000 students across the country between 2007-2010. During this enrollment period, ITT misrepresented the value of its education, telling potential students they would get high-paying jobs after graduation with a constant rate of earning growth- sometimes more than $100,000 in average annual earnings than workers with the same credentials.
To read the letter, click
here.
The letter was led by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who were joined by the District of Columbia and the states of Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.