ITT SCAMMED AND SCREWED STUDENTS SIX WAYS TO SUNDAY
As someone who follows financial news very closely, there are stories that just make me see red. I deal with a lot of people who have tried to make the best choices they can under the circumstances and ended up in a jam, but the scam schools/for profit/student loan mess just hits the trifecta of things that make me mad. An article in Gizmodo outlines not only how ITT got students in the door, but how they were treated very shabbily once they were in the door and more or less locked in. Former faculty, staff, and students opened up to Gizmodo’s technology editor Michael Nunez and pried the lid off the can of worms.
The ITT reps, executives, and even shareholders saw these people as cash cows, to be milked for every sent they could come up with. While many students through this was their only option to improve their lives and provide for their families, they got taken for a very expensive ride that included paying up to $90,000 for a bachelor’s degree – this is based on a document internally generated by the school itself for the 2014-2015 academic year. This tuition that tops out some of the most expensive private colleges such as Columbia, University of Chicago, and Amherst in terms of tuition costs by nearly $40,000. In fact, the cost per educational credit was nearly $500 more PER CREDIT – not per academic year – than a two-year course at a two-year public college.
In fact, back in 2010, when FAFSA was insufficient to meet the cost of obtaining a degree, ITT opened its own in-house/off balance sheet lending program, urging students to take out these private loans to bridge the gap. They staved off investigations into their student’s default and job placement rates. Student resources were poor, and even online students experienced being locked out of classes for spurious reasons until they ultimately failed. Now the damage is done, with tens of thousands of students drowning in debt and some holding degrees that HR departments have admitted to weeding out. Others are already being approached by other for-profits who make big promises but are now under the same scrutiny that have sunk Corinthian and ITT.
If you are an ITT student, please, please call me for a free consultation. You are under a lot of pressure right now to move forward with your interrupted education, paying down your debts, and trying to get back on the ladder again. You may be eligible for loan forgiveness, or to have it discharged completely under borrower defense to repayment. You need to know if the schools banging on your door are legitimate institutions or a bunch of ITT mini-mes. You have choices and options, so let’s make sure you know all of them, and make sure that you get on the ladder – not the treadmill. We have offices in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, so make that call.