‘Largest Single Loan Discharge’: Biden Administration Canceling $5.8 Billion for Former Corinthian College Students

The Biden administration is canceling $5.8 billion in school loan debt for students who attended the for-profit Corinthian Colleges system, the U.S. Department of Education announced.

The mass cancellation of the federal student loans applies to borrowers who attended “any campus owned or operated by Corinthian Colleges Inc. (Corinthian) from its founding in 1995 through its closure in April 2015.” At the height of its run, Corinthian was one of the largest for-profit companies, boasting 110,000 students attending over 100 campuses across the nation,

“This will result in 560,000 borrowers receiving $5.8 billion in full loan discharges. This includes borrowers who have not yet applied for a borrower defense discharge, who will have their Corinthian loans discharged without any additional action on their part,” a press release from the Education Department reads, deeming this action the “largest single loan discharge” in the department’s history. It added that the decision “builds upon conclusions first reached by the Department of Education in 2015 that Corinthian engaged in widespread and pervasive misrepresentations related to a borrower’s employment prospects, including guarantees they would find a job.”

The claims of fraud run deep, as the department said Corinthian also made “pervasive misstatements to prospective students about the ability to transfer credits and falsified their public job placement rates.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona added that Corinthian “engaged in the wholesale financial exploitation of students, misleading them into taking on more and more debt to pay for promises they would never keep.”

He continued:

While our actions today will relieve Corinthian Colleges’ victims of their burdens, the Department of Education is actively ramping up oversight to better protect today’s students from tactics and make sure that for-profit institutions – and the corporations that own them – never again get away with such abuse.

The move comes as the Biden administration reportedly works on a plan to address the student loan debt issue more broadly, with rumblings of the White House crafting a plan to cancel $10,000 of student loan debt per borrower.

Far-left members of Congress have continued to beg Biden to take action on student loan debt forgiveness, but he has long held off on taking any serious action on the matter. However, he told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in a private meeting in late April that he is open to canceling student loan debt, though he has yet to announce a broad plan to do so.