Tell the Department of Ed: Clean up the Corinthian Mess

Sunday, Corinthian Colleges—a huge for-profit chain—closed abruptly, leaving tens of thousands of students in the lurch.

Corinthian was already in deep trouble after the Department of Education hit it with a $30 million fine for misleading students and making fraudulent claims about the value of a Corinthian degree.

The Department of Education failed to protect students from Corinthian’s predatory practices—but it has a chance to help fix the mess.

The Department of Education has the legal authority to forgive student loans for victims of Corinthians’ illegal practices. Send a message to Secretary Duncan demanding that the department cancel Corinthian students’ debt now!

As a professor at Milwaukee Area Technical College, I know firsthand how access to a high-quality higher education can make a difference in the lives of students. And I’ve also seen how the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges exploited that hope to burden tens of thousands of students with crushing debt, credits that don’t transfer and nothing to show for it but broken dreams.

When Everest College, part of Corinthian, opened across the street from MATC in October 2010, I didn’t know much about it. By the time that campus closed less than two years later, I knew plenty.

Everest charged much higher tuition and fees than MATC—four times as much for an associate degree in accounting, for example. Yet while 86 percent of MATC graduates are either working in their field or continuing their education within six months of graduation, the Everest Milwaukee campus had a job placement rate of less than 6 percent.

Corinthian used deception and high-pressure recruitment to defraud students—many of them low-income people fighting for their chance at a better life.

Students should not be forced to pay for Corinthian’s fraud. Tell the Department of Education to cancel Corinthian students’ debt now!

The Department of Education failed to protect students from Corinthian’s fraud. We need the department to do the right thing by tens of thousands of students and cancel their debt for loans they took on because of Corinthian’s lies.

Sincerely,
Michael Rosen, Ph.D.
President, AFT Local 212/MATC

P.S. Do you know a student who was attending a now-closed Corinthian campus? Use this “Closed Student Loan Discharge Packet" to help them figure out if they are eligible for a loan discharge and walk them through the discharge process.

P.P.S. Know a student who was defrauded by a for-profit college? Submit a complaint here.