Obama To Cancel Debts Owed By Defrauded For-Profit College Students

[kpete]

Obama To Cancel Debts Owed By Defrauded For-Profit College Students
The Education Department will cancel over $27.8 million of federal student loans owed by more than 1,300 former students at Heald College.

The U.S. Department of Education will cancel over $27.8 million in federal student loans owed by some 1,300 former students of Corinthian Colleges Inc., a defunct for-profit school chain, after determining that the students were swindled into taking out the debt, according to a government report to be released Thursday.

The debt forgiveness plan represents the first recent use of a little-utilized provision in federal law that gives student debtors the right to petition the Education Department to discharge their loans in cases where they were defrauded into taking out the debt.

The move comes six months after Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell said the department would "fast track" applications submitted by students who attended certain programs at Heald College, a primarily California-based career school owned by Corinthian. In April, the department determined that Heald had systematically misled students and accreditation agencies about graduates’ employment rates and had shown a “blatant disregard” for the federal student loan program.

Some 40,000 former Heald students are eligible for debt cancellations, according to the Education Department. Nearly 1,700 former Heald students have applied for debt relief, according to Thursday's report. But the number of applications filed by borrowers, and the share of those that have been ruled on, have raised questions among student advocates about the effectiveness of the Education Department's outreach to defrauded students and whether the department is too heavily concerned about the budgetary costs of canceling loans.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/student-debt-for-profit-colleges_56607635e4b079b2818d7c7a

[msrizzo]

1. This is good.

I like it very much.

[bettyellen]

2. Awesome.

[olddots]

3. we interupt this mass shooting with some good news

This is good news that won't get any coverage from the fear machine .

[randys1]

4. Would NEVER EVER happen if GOP in WH.

BTW, all education related debts must be erased today, if not sooner.

[tk2kewl]

5. it's a start

[monmouth4]

6. I wonder if Trump Univ. will be included in these scams....n/t