Who Qualifies For Nearly $4 Billion In Automatic Student Loan Forgiveness

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced $3.9 billion in automatic student loan forgiveness for over 200,000 borrowers through a new initiative to provide relief to borrowers who were defrauded by for-profit schools. Here are the details. The Biden administration is implementing the nearly $4 billion in student loan forgiveness through a group discharge process under the Borrower Defense to Repayment program. Borrower Defense can provide student loan cancellation for borrowers who were defrauded by their school through false promises or misrepresentations about key elements of a degree or certificate program. Today’s group discharge announcement will cancel the federal student loan debt for borrowers who attended ITT Technical Institutes (ITT) from January 1, 2005, through its closure in September 2016, according to the Department of Education. ITT was a national chain of for-profit institutions that collapsed in 2016 following allegations of widespread misconduct. While typically borrowers must submit a formal application to apply for Borrower Defense to Repayment, today’s group discharge will automatically apply to all such ITT borrowers, even if they have not submitted a Borrower Defense application. The action is expected to benefit over 200,000 federal student loan borrowers. The initiative mirrors a similar group discharge announced in June for borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges, another national chain of for-profit schools that collapsed under the weight of misconduct allegations. That initiative will cancel $6 billion in student loan debt for over half a million borrowers. The Education Department issued findings in support of the group discharge decision that ITT engaged in a pattern of widespread misconduct.“ITT engaged in widespread and pervasive misrepresentations related to the ability of students to get a job or transfer credits, and lying about the programmatic accreditation” of certain degree programs, according to the Department of Education. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) had also found that ITT had “pressured its students into taking out high-cost private [student] loans, even though ITT knew most of its students would ultimately default” on them.“ITT defrauded hundreds of thousands of students, as we identified when I was the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau," said Federal Student Aid Chief Richard Cordray in a statement on Tuesday. "By delivering the loan relief students deserve, we are giving them the opportunity to resume their educational journey without the unfair burden of student debt they are carrying from a dishonest institution."Advocacy groups for student loan borrowers praised the Education Department’s actions on Tuesday.“ITT was a sham institution, and we have the receipts,” said Project on Predatory Student Lending President and Director, Eileen Connor, in a statement. All data is taken from the source: http://forbes.com Article Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/20... #student #newsuk #newstodaydonaldtrump #newstoday #newstodayusa #newstodayoncnn #