(TruthAndLiberty.com) – On Wednesday the Biden administration announced that they would be canceling $72 million in student debt for all those borrowers who had attended Ashford University. The University of Arizona had purchased the former for-profit institution three years ago.
James Kvaal, the U.S. Under Secretary of Education pointed out that it was proven in court by the California Justice Department that the institution had used “high-pressure and deceptive recruiting tactics” in order to get students to attend. He argued that this move was going to help protect those students who had been cheated by the institution and that perpetrators would be held accountable for their actions.
The Department of Education has stated that a total of 2,300 borrowers who claimed to have been misled by Ashford University would have their student debt forgiven. The department further stated that the money was going to be recouped from the University of Arizona.
The cancellation of the student loans results from a lawsuit filed by the state of California against both Ashford and Zovio, its parent company. In that lawsuit, the evidence presented showed that the two companies had misrepresented substantially much of the information that borrowers had used for their decision, which could have had a detrimental effect on the students.
As the Department argued in the lawsuit that had been an ongoing practice from March 1, 2009, until April 30, 2020. The lawsuit filed by the California Justice Department was won last year, and the court decided that the university had made over 1.2 million through misleading students. They are also required to pay a civil penalty of $22.3 million as a result of the lawsuit.
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