- Biden canceled $55.6 million in student debt for borrowers who went to 3 for-profit schools.
- 1,800 borrowers who went to Westwood College, Marinello Schools of Beauty, and the Court Reporting Institute will receive relief.
- This brings Biden's total debt cancellation for defrauded borrowers to $1.5 billion for 92,000 people.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
President Joe Biden's Education Department on Friday made progress in its promise to reform the student-debt system by canceling student debt for three more groups of defrauded borrowers.
The Education Department announced on Friday that it had approved borrower defense claims from 1,800 borrowers who attended the for-profits Westwood College, Marinello Schools of Beauty, and the Court Reporting Institute, resulting in approximately $55.6 million in relief.
"Today's announcement continues the U.S. Department of Education's commitment to standing up for students whose colleges took advantage of them," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. "The Department will continue doing its part to review and approve borrower defense claims quickly and fairly so that borrowers receive the relief that they need and deserve."
According to the press release, this is the first time the department has announced approved borrower defense claims for students who attended for-profit institutions other than ITT Technical Institutes, Corinthian Colleges, and American Career Institute since 2017.
The debt-cancellation methodology created under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, known as the "borrower defense to repayment, compares the median earnings of graduates with debt-relief claims to the median earnings of graduates in comparable programs. The bigger the difference, the more relief the applicant would receive.
While President Barack Obama's Administration approved 99.2% of claims by defrauded borrowers, President Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos denied 99.4% of those filed during her tenure. DeVos' method ran up a huge backlog of claims from eligible defrauded borrowers seeking student debt forgiveness; Cardona said that process did not result in appropriate relief determination and needed to be reversed.
With regards to Westwood College, the department found that from 2002 to the college's closure in 2015, the school misrepresented students' abilities to transfer credits and misled students in finding appropriate career choices, leaving students "worse off" after attending the school. 1,600 of those students are receiving $53 million in debt relief.
The department also found that Marinello Schools of Beauty "made widespread, substantial misrepresentations" on the type of education they offered, and 200 of those students will receive $2.2 million debt relief, and it found that the Court Reporting Institute misrepresented how long it would take students to complete the program, resulting in 18 of those students receiving $340,000 in debt relief.
This brings total loan cancellation based on borrower defense under Biden to over $1.5 billion for nearly 92,000 borrowers.