WASHINGTON — Pamela Hunt is so overwhelmed by her $56,000 in student loans for what she considers a worthless criminal justice master’s degree that she’s joined others on a “debt strike” and is refusing to pay back the money.
On Tuesday, she walked out of a meeting with officials from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Education Department she and other former students from for-profit colleges attended on behalf of the “Corinthian 100” feeling cautiously optimistic about the burden being eased.
“I think it can go either way,” said Hunt, 55, who works in home health care in Ledyard, Connecticut. She obtained her degree online through Everest College.
The group’s name comes from troubled Corinthian Colleges, Inc., which operated Everest College, Heald College and WyoTech before agreeing last summer to sell or close its 100-plus campuses. About 100 current and former students are refusing to pay back their loans, according to the Debt Collective group behind the strike.
“I know they heard us but I don’t know if they actually understand the significance of what a lot of us are going through,” said Hunt, describing former students unable to take out car loans and on the verge of going homeless.
By not paying back their loans, the former Corinthian students potentially face a host of financial problems, such as poor credit ratings and greater debt because of interest accrued.
Already, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has asked the courts to grant relief to Corinthian students who collectively have taken out more than $500 million in private student loans.
Officials from the bureau agreed to the meeting Tuesday that included Ted Mitchell, the Education Department’s undersecretary. The Education Department is the former students’ main target because they want the department to discharge their loans.
Luke Herrine, an organizer with the Debt Collective in attendance, said government officials seemed “committed to actually doing something about this” and told them they would get back to the former students within 30 days.
Many of Corinthian’s troubles came to light last year after it was placed by the Education Department on heightened cash monitoring with a 21-day waiting period for federal funds.
That was after the department said it failed to provide adequate paperwork and comply with requests to address concerns about the company’s practices, which included allegations of falsifying job placement data used in marketing claims and of altered grades and attendance records.
The administration has taken other steps to crack down on the for-profit college industry, such as announcing a new rule last year that would require career training programs to show that students can earn enough money after graduation to pay off their loans. The rule has been challenged in court by the for-profit education sector.
That’s not enough for Sarah Dieffenbacher, one of the former students participating in the effort who owes more than $100,000 in federal and private loans taken out to attend Everest College in Ontario, California.
She said she doesn’t even put her studies in paralegal and criminal justice on her resume because she went to apply for jobs at law firms she was told her studies didn’t count for anything.
Today, she’s working in collections for a property management company and can’t afford the $1,500 a month she owes in loans.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.