By Nathalie Voit

The U.S. Education Department will provide $415 million in student debt relief for borrowers who attended for-profit schools, the department announced in a press release on Feb. 16.

Nearly 16,000 student debt borrowers who attended certain for-profit institutions, such as DeVry University, will have their debts cleared. The relief totals approximately $415 million, according to the department.

“The Department remains committed to giving borrowers discharges when the evidence shows their college violated the law and standards,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said.

“Students count on their colleges to be truthful,” she added. “Unfortunately, today’s findings show too many instances in which students were misled into loans at institutions or programs that could not deliver what they’d promised.”

Approximately 1,800 former DeVry University students will receive $71.7 million in “full borrower defense discharges” after the department discovered the institution had made widespread and substantially misleading claims about its job placement rates.

The Education Department found that from 2008 to 2015, DeVry repeatedly misled prospective students nationwide with claims that 90% of DeVry graduates who actively sought employment obtained a job within six months. The claim was the basis of the school’s national marketing campaign called “We Major In Careers” to advertise DeVry as a “Career Placement University.” The 90% placement statistic inflated the school’s admissions numbers and convinced prospective students to enroll.

In reality, the Education Department found the real job placement rate was around 58%. The school had knowingly and grossly inflated its statistics by including jobs held by students well before they graduated from DeVry or even prior to attending the school in its claimed 90% placement rate, the department said.

In addition to forgiving student debt for victims of DeVry, the department will provide an additional $343.7 million in relief to nearly 14,000 borrowers from other for-profit schools, including Westwood College, the nursing program at ITT Technical Institute, and the Minnesota School of Business/Globe University.

“When colleges and career schools put their own interests ahead of students, we will not look the other way,” said Federal Student Aid Chief Operating Officer Richard Cordray.

The findings bring the total amount of approved relief under the Biden administration to approximately $2 billion for over 107,000 borrowers, the department said.