Kansas students to get over $2 million back from for-profit colleges thanks to settlement
More than 1,000 Kansas students will receive $2.1 million in student loan forgiveness under the terms of a settlement reached last week with Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt and attorneys general in 48 states plus the District of Columbia.
“Nobody’s heard of the parent company, Career Education Corporation,” said Schmidt. Many Kansans have heard of two of the major online entities that sell services to Kansans. American InterContinental University and Colorado Technical University. There were others.”
A total of 1,077 Kansans are eligible for student loan debt relief for a total amount of $2,142,116.
“The basis of our investigation was that this company made a variety of representations to people buying its services, to students that were enrolling for a degree, that either just weren’t true or they weren’t complete or they were misleading.”
Some students could not obtain professional licensure and incurred debts that they could not repay nor discharge.
“You can still operate as a university, if you’re properly regulated under state law,” said Schmidt. “You cannot fail to disclose information, you cannot give false information to your students in order to lure them into spending money.”
Nationwide, the agreement requires the for-profit college company to forgive $493,687,220 in outstanding loan debt held by more than 66,000 former students.
