The Biden administration is wiping out $6.1 billion in federal student debt for 317,000 former participants of the Art Institutes, a former chain of for-profit art schools, officials said. announcement Wednesday.
Many Art Institute schools have farm across the country, including two in North Carolina that farm late 2018: The Art Institute of Charlotte and The Art Institute of Raleigh-Durham on the American Tobacco Campus in downtown Durham, both campuses of Miami International University of Art and Design.
The release includes individuals who were enrolled at any Art Institute campus between January 1, 2004 and October 16, 2017, the date the Education Management Corp. (EDMC), now bankrupt, owned about 50 of these schools.
“This institution falsified data, knowingly misled students, and deceived borrowers into taking on debt without providing them with promising career opportunities upon graduation,” the president said. Joe Biden said in a statement.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education will begin notifying eligible borrowers that their debt has been canceled. Borrowers do not have to take any action. The department said it would suspend loan payments and refund previous federal payments for those marked for this forgiveness.
A review by Department of Education officials found that the Art Institutes and their parent company made false statements to prospective students about employment rates, salaries and career services after graduation during this 13 year period. Various studies at the Art Institute included forms of design, digital media, culinary arts, and fashion.
The Department of Education independently reviewed evidence from the attorneys general’s offices in Iowa, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, it says. Previously, state attorneys general investigated and filed lawsuits against the Art Institutes and EDMC.
“For more than a decade, hundreds of thousands of hopeful students borrowed billions to attend the Art Institutes and got nothing but lies in return,” said the U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, in a press release.
“It ends today,” he said.
School records showed that the institutes falsified and inflated employment rates in students’ fields of study by excluding information about graduates who did not stay in the arts and claiming that people were in the arts then that they did not have clear information about their employment, the department said.
As such, the average employment rate on the Art Institute grounds was approximately 57%, not 82% as the schools had reported.
This also included boasting about the incorrect average salaries of graduates from different campuses, such as including outliers like the annual income of tennis star and Fashion Art Institute alumna Serena Williams to inflate the average, it said. the Department.
The department also found that the institutes also relied on fake salary data that did not match what graduates reported.
Art institutes have overstated their relationships with employers and failed to offer ongoing career services once students graduate, the…
