The Education Department said Thursday that it will cancel the loans of 28,000 student borrowers who attended a now-defunct for-profit chain of cosmetology schools, the latest move by the Biden administration to address the politically charged issue of student-debt forgiveness, the Wall Street Journal reported. Borrowers who attended the Marinello Schools of Beauty between 2009 and its closure in 2016 are eligible for relief, which amounts to $238 million. The federal government previously determined that Marinello had “engaged in pervasive and widespread misconduct that negatively affected all borrowers” enrolled during that period — among other things, that it had “failed to train students in key elements of a cosmetology program, such as how to cut hair.” Some Marinello loans have already been forgiven, but Thursday’s action is a broad group discharge for anyone who went to the school during that period, even those who haven’t applied for relief. It is the first such group loan forgiveness since the Obama administration.
