What Colleges Are Corinthian? Education Department Announces Loan Forgiveness
The U.S. Department of Education is forgiving all student loans borrowed to attend the now-defunct Corinthian College. What colleges are Corinthian?
June 3 2022, Published 11:41 a.m. ET
If you attended a Corinthian College on a federal student loan, the U.S. Department of Education has good news for you. The government agency is forgiving all student loans borrowed to attend the now-defunct for-profit colleges. What colleges are Corinthian?
Corinthian includes Everest, Heald, and WyoTech campuses.
There aren’t any Corinthian Colleges still in business today. Most of the colleges, both in the U.S. and Canada, were closed or sold by 2015. At one time, the college operated campuses under the names Everest College, Heald College, and WyoTech. The Corinthian-associated campuses offered diploma and degree programs in healthcare, business, criminal justice, construction, IT, and transportation technology and maintenance.
Kamala Harris sued Corinthian for deceptive tactics.
By 2010, Corinthian had 105 campuses in the U.S. that enrolled over 110,000 students. But things started to unravel when Kamala Harris, in her past role as California’s Attorney General, sued the company in 2013 for alleged deceptive recruitment tactics and false advertising.
Prompted by Harris’s lawsuit, the Department of Education started investigating the for-profit college chain. The department found that Corinthian “engaged in widespread and pervasive misrepresentations” related to borrowers’ employment prospects. The colleges also misled prospective students about their ability to transfer credits and falsified their public job placement rates, the department said.
"For far too long, Corinthian engaged in the wholesale financial exploitation of students, misleading them into taking on more and more debt to pay for promises they would never keep,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.
Harris and the state of California received an over $1 billion judgment against Corinthian in 2016. That judgment included $820 million in restitution for defrauded students, who could apply for borrower defense to have their loans canceled.
Corinthian borrowers will automatically have their student loans forgiven.
With this latest announcement from the Department of Education, defrauded Corinthian students won't need to go through the borrower defense process to get their loans canceled. All remaining federal student loan debts used for Corinthian colleges will be automatically erased.
The loan forgiveness program will impact 560,000 former Corinthian students who will receive total loan discharges to the tune of $5.8 billion. It’s the largest single loan discharge in history, according to the Department of Education.
President Biden has forgiven $25 billion in student loans.
The Corinthian loan forgiveness plan is part of $25 billion in student loan relief that President Joe Biden’s administration has approved since January 2021. Earlier this year, the Department of Education forgave $415 million in student loans for borrowers who attended other for-profit colleges like DeVry University, ITT Technical Institute, and Globe University. DeVry is the only for-profit college still in operation. The rest have closed their doors.
“Providing this targeted relief is part of the Biden-Harris Administration's continued commitment to helping borrowers who are struggling the most by ensuring discharge programs provide borrowers the complete relief to which they are entitled,” the Department of Education said in a statement.