The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday approved a group discharge of $3.9 billion in federal student loan debt for over 200,000 borrowers who claimed to be defrauded by a for-profit college chain.
Any student who had taken a federal loan to attend the now-defunct ITT Technical Institutes will automatically have their debt wiped out, regardless of whether they are applying for a borrower defense discharge, the department said. Typically, borrowers need to file a borrower defense claim against the college they believe has misled them in order to get some or all of the loan debt discharged.
