FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 2, 2022

CONTACT:
Carter Dougherty
(202) 251-6700
carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org

Discharge for Corinthian Borrowers Should Presage Broad-Based Cancellation

This week the Department of Education announced that it will discharge all remaining federal student loans for borrowers who attended any campus owned or operated by Corinthian Colleges Inc. The relief will total $5.8 billion and cancel debt for 560,000 borrowers, without any additional action needed.

“This is an important win for Corinthian students, and congratulates the student activists who did so much to secure this measure of justice” said Emily Hirtle, policy associate for Americans for Financial Reform. 

“We urge President Biden to act swiftly to follow up on this announcement with broad cancellation of $50,000 of student debt, without means testing to help millions more borrowers and their families” said Elyse Hicks, consumer policy counsel at AFR. 

Corinthian is a for-profit company that egregiously preyed on hundreds of thousands of vulnerable students from its founding in 1995 until its closure in April 2015. The company engaged in widespread and pervasive misrepresentation of students’ employment prospects, including falsifying their public job placement records and guaranteeing students would get a job upon graduation while actually leaving them without improved job prospects and saddled with debt. 

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