The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it would forgive $6 billion in student debt for borrowers who attended the Arts Institutes.
The 317,000 borrowers will receive the relief after it was discovered that the school “falsified data, knowingly misled students, and tricked borrowers into taking on mountains of debt without leading to promising career prospects at the end of their studies.”
Relief comes through the Borrower Defense program, which allows those who have been defrauded by their schools to receive loan cancellation.
Among the infractions against the Arts Institutes is the false advertisement that 80% of graduates found employment in their field within six months of graduation. The ads also included inflated salary data for the school’s graduates.
“For more than a decade, hundreds of thousands of hopeful students borrowed billions to attend The Art Institutes and received little more than lies in return. That ends today – thanks to the Biden-Harris administration’s work with the attorneys general of Iowa, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “We must continue to protect borrowers from predatory institutions – and work toward a higher education system that is affordable for students and taxpayers.”
In the announcement, Biden went directly after Trump, saying, “While my predecessor turned a blind eye when colleges defrauded students and borrowers, I promised to take it on directly to provide borrowers the relief they need and deserve.”
The latest round of forgiveness brings the total amount of relief provided to student loan borrowers under the Biden administration to $160 billion for 4.6 million individuals.
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