Remember ITT Tech? Former MN Students Will Get Their Debt Canceled

MINNEAPOLIS — The federal government will cancel $26.3 million in federal student debt for 1,380 Minnesota borrowers who attended ITT Technical Institute.

ITT Tech was a private, for-profit chain of schools that closed in 2016 while facing accusations of widescale fraud.

The school was well known for its TV commercials.

Minnesota students who enrolled in ITT Technical Institute between 2005 and 2016 qualify for the relief, which comes after the state Attorney General Keith Ellison's request to the Biden Administration.

Under federal law, the U.S. Department of Education can cancel federal student loans when it finds that borrowers were deceived in obtaining those loans.

"Minnesotans take out federal student loans in good faith to help themselves and their families get ahead — and ITT Tech took advantage of them," Ellison said in a statement.

"They operated a large, for-profit chain of schools that used aggressive, often misleading sales tactics to sign people up for programs that provided little value and buried students in debt. When ITT began to be held to account for their misdeeds and abuse of taxpayer dollars, they quickly folded — leaving students holding the bag. That was deeply wrong."

Ellison's office said that a multistate investigation uncovered systemic fraud in the marketing of ITT programs that violated Minnesota law.

The school encouraged prospective students to enroll and take on thousands of dollars of debt based on false information about the value of an ITT degree and empty promises of high-paying jobs after graduation, according to Ellison.

Ellison successfully argued to the federal government that widespread and pervasive misrepresentations violated Minnesota’s consumer-protection laws.

Nationally, the Department of Education will cancel $39 billion in debt for 208,000 borrowers of ITT Tech.