Student loan forgiveness: Administration cancels debt for more than 2,300

The Biden administration announced Wednesday it would be wiping out millions in student debt for more borrowers who, according to the Department of Education, were defrauded by a university.

In the DOE announcement, administration officials said $72 million in relief will go to more than 2,300 borrowers who attended the school formerly known as Ashford University.

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Ashford University was an online, for-profit school based in San Diego. The University of Arizona has since acquired the school and renamed the school the “University of Arizona Global Campus.”

The DOE said Ashford made misrepresentations to students who were enrolled in the school between 2009 and 2020.

“As the California Department of Justice proved in court, Ashford relied extensively on high-pressure and deceptive recruiting tactics to lure students,” U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in the statement.

“Today we are protecting the students who were cheated by Ashford, and we will also hold the perpetrators accountable, protect taxpayers, and deter future wrongdoing.”

A court previously sided with California’s Department of Justice in March 2022 in a lawsuit against Ashford and Zovio, Inc., its parent company, the statement said.

Ashford University students had filed for loan forgiveness under the department’s borrower defense process.

Borrowers who are eligible for the loan forgiveness will be emailed in September, the DOE said.

The announcement came two weeks after a federal district court dismissed a lawsuit from two conservative groups aimed at blocking the Biden administration’s plan to offer student loan forgiveness to more than 800,000 borrowers.

The plan would erase outstanding debt worth about $39 billion that certain borrowers still owe after making 20 to 25 years’ worth of student loan payments. The court ruling will pave the way for the plan to go forward.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June rejected Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which would have canceled as much as $20,000 in student loan debt for individual borrowers, totaling $430 billion.