In a pair of aggressive moves targeting for-profit college chains, the Education Department on Tuesday wiped out about $4 billion in debts owed by students who attended ITT Technical Institute schools and sought to recoup $24 million from DeVry University, the New York Times reported. The moves are part of the department’s efforts to crack down on the for-profit education sector and help students who have been defrauded. The agency said that it would automatically discharge all remaining federal loans for 208,000 borrowers who attended ITT Technical Institute schools from 2005 until the chain’s collapse in 2016. It is the second time that President Biden’s administration has automatically eliminated the debts of defrauded students, after a similar move in June that forgave nearly $6 billion owed by more than 500,000 former students at Corinthian Colleges, another large for-profit chain that imploded. “In recent years, too many for-profit colleges and career schools have been caught defrauding and deceiving their students,” the education secretary, Miguel A. Cardona, said. “Their entire business model relied on driving students deep into debt, and then they laughed their way right to the bank.” Both ITT and Corinthian went bankrupt years ago, leaving taxpayers on the hook for the debts now being forgiven for the schools’ former students.
