If you took out a federal student loan to pay for classes at a college operated by Corinthian Colleges, Inc., that debt will soon be forgiven. The U.S. Department of Education recently announced that 560,000 borrowers will have $5.8 billion of federal loans discharged as part of this action.
According to the Department of Education announcement, the private, for-profit Corinthians Colleges “engaged in widespread and pervasive misrepresentations related to a borrower’s employment prospects, including guarantees they would find a job. Corinthian also made pervasive misstatements to prospective students about the ability to transfer credits and falsified their public job placement rates.”
The Department of Education will soon begin notifying students who attended Corinthian schools of this decision, with the actual discharges following in the months after. Borrowers will not have to take any actions to receive their discharges.
Corinthian Colleges operated 23 campuses in California, including seven in Los Angeles County under the names of Everest College (Alhambra, Gardena, Industry, Reseda, Torrance, West Los Angeles) and WyoTech (Long Beach).
Government actions against Corinthians started in 2013, when then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris sued Corinthian, alleging that the company intentionally misrepresented to its students about job placement rates and was engaging in deceptive and false advertising and recruitment.
