Stratford University, the for-profit college whose abrupt closure last year left hundreds of students without a clear path to a degree, officially filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy earlier this month, WTOP.com reported. In Feb. 2 filings with the Eastern District of Virginia’s bankruptcy court in Alexandria, the defunct college claims to hold $696,241 in assets but over $8.5 million in debt. According to the filings, $2.2 million of that debt is owed to the U.S. Department of Education for loans that the department had to discharge because of the school’s closure. Creditors have until May 12 to file proof of claims. The university quickly shuttered last September after its accreditor, ACICS, was decertified by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to meet federal standards, and Stratford failed to find a new accrediting institution. The decertification meant that Stratford — which at the time operated campuses in Woodbridge, Alexandria and Baltimore — could no longer accept federal student loans, the main revenue source for for-profit colleges. At the time, Stratford President Richard Shurtz said that without that revenue, the college could not continue to operate. The college referred its roughly 800 nursing students to other nearby for-profit colleges to transfer, but representatives for those colleges said that most of their credits would not transfer with them.
