Former students at the WyoTech campus in Burrell Township are rejoicing after yesterday’s announcement that the federal government will automatically cancel the debt from their federal student loans. WyoTech was one of a chain of schools operated by Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit corporation that folded in 2015 after it was found guilty of lying about job placement rates and setting up low-income students to take out student loans for what was essentially a substandard education.
Under the terms of a new policy announced yesterday by the U.S. Education Department, anyone who attended a Corinthian school between 1995 and 2015 will have their federal student debt erased. That’s about $5.8 billion for more than 560,000 former students at more than 100 campuses.
The WyoTech campus outside of Blairsville was operated by Corinthian until its acquisition by Zenith Education Group in 2014. It closed in 2017 and is now in the hands of another company that re-opened the campus last year.
