More than 1,000 students who attended the University of Phoenix and applied for relief will have their loans discharged, according to the White House.
The move to discharge $37 million worth of loan repayment was announced Wednesday by The Biden-Harris Administration.
More than 1,200 impacted students were reportedly misled by a national ad campaign, officials say, between September 2012 and December 2014.
The U.S. Department of Education (Department) found that a national ad campaign from Phoenix misled prospective students by falsely representing that its partnerships with thousands of corporations, including Fortune 500 companies, would benefit students by, for example, giving them hiring preferences at those companies, a release from the White House read. In fact, Phoenixs corporate partnerships provided no such benefits to students.
A multi-year investigation against the University of Phoenix and a $191 million resolution was met in 2019.
The White House says affected borrowers will be notified by early October that their applications have been approved. Those borrowers will see remaining loan balances zeroed out and credit trade lines deleted. Some refunds may also be given.
The University of Phoenix released the following statement regarding the White House’s decision:
We respectfully, but adamantly disagree with the U.S. Department of Educations allegations related to the Dec. 2019 University of Phoenix settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The claims made by the FTC and the Dept. of Ed were never tested in court. We stand behind our statement from Dec. of 2019 in which we admitted no wrongdoing in the Lets Get Back to Work campaign, a single campaign that ran from late 2012 to early 2014. We encourage review of our statement and the ads on a
University of Phoenix microsite [phoenix.edu]
. With respect the Borrower Defense to Repayment claims, the University of Phoenix takes student borrower complaints very seriously and has provided significant evidence to the Dept. of Ed refuting inaccurate, baseless, or incomplete claims. While the University is not against relief for borrowers who have valid claims, we intend to vigorously challenge each frivolous allegation and suspicious claim through every available legal avenue.We remain focused on our mission which is providing quality, career-relevant higher education to underserved adult learners while supporting our more than one million University alumni.