Federal government to forgive all remaining loans to ITT Tech students
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The federal government will forgive the student loans of thousands of students who attended the now-defunct ITT Technical Institute.
The U.S. Department of Education said Tuesday that it will forgive all remaining federal student loans that borrowers received to attend ITT Tech between Jan. 1, 2005, and the school’s closure in September 2016.
These borrowers will have their loans discharged or forgiven without any additional action on their part, the Department of Education said in a statement.
The decision will result in nearly $4 billion being returned to 208,000 former ITT students, including any borrowers who have not yet applied for a “borrower defense to repayment discharge.“
“It is time for student borrowers to stop shouldering the burden from ITT’s years of lies and false promises,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “The evidence shows that for years, ITT’s leaders intentionally misled students about the quality of their programs in order to profit off federal student loan programs, with no regard for the hardship this would cause.”
ITT Technical Institute was a for-profit technical institute based in Carmel. ITT was the subject of numerous government probes over grade inflation, recruitment tactics, job placement figures, accreditation issues, and predatory lending practices.
The company closed all 130 of its U.S. campuses in September 2016, one month after the Department of Education banned ITT from enrolling new students who receive financial aid.
Indiana State Senator J.D. Ford, a Democrat, has fought for these Hoosiers at the state house.
“Many of them that I’ve spoken to had a hard time trying to figure out how to pay rent, pay groceries, and also paying back this bill that they didn’t even have a credential to show for it,” Ford said.
Since the closure of ITT Tech, federal officials have approved $1.9 billion in loan discharges for about 130,000 former students.