Loan forgiveness offered to more former ITT Tech students

The Education Department has announced it will forgive student debt for more than 100,000 borrowers who attended colleges in the now-defunct ITT Technical Institute chain but left before graduating

The Education Department announced Thursday it will forgive student debt for more than 100,000 borrowers who attended colleges in the now-defunct ITT Technical Institute chain but left before graduating. In a rarely used move, the agency said it will erase federal loans for borrowers who left the for-profit colleges during an eight-year window before their 2016 closure. During that period, the department said, ITT Tech lied about its financial health and misled students into taking on debt they couldn’t repay. The action will offer $1.1 billion in loan forgiveness to 115,000 borrowers who attended ITT Tech, which had more than 130 campuses across 38 states. About 43% of those borrowers are in default on their student loans, the department said. “For years, ITT hid its true financial state from borrowers while luring many of them into taking out private loans with misleading and unaffordable terms that may have caused borrowers to leave school,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.