Heald College is set to discharge millions in student loans
Heald College a regionally accredited for-profit, business–career college is set to discharge millions in student loans to former students. The Department of Education will relieve much of the remaining student debt for those who attended the now-shuttered Corinthian College.
Heald College Lawsuit.
The US Department of Education fined the for-profit group $30-million for misrepresenting post-graduation job placement rates.
The investigation found that the for-profit college paid companies to hire its graduates for as few as two days. The college then counted those graduates in its placement rates.”
Corinthians also artificially inflated placement rates by excluding large numbers of their graduates from the calculation, according to the department. For example, it found that one criminal justice program boasted a 100 percent placement rate, but the college had removed almost 60 percent of the graduates from the calculation by deeming them unavailable for employment.
In other cases, the letter says Corinthian counted graduates as employed even though they were clearly not working in their field of study. For example, the department said, Corinthian claimed that a graduate of an accounting program working in a food service job at Taco Bell was employed in her field.
In each finding of a violation, the department imposed the maximum penalty allowed under the Higher Education Act, which is the federal law that governs financial aid programs.
The settlement follows a multi-year investigation by states attorneys general and a report from the U.S. Senate, which found that Heald College:
- used emotionally charged language to pressure students into enrolling in their schools;
- deceived students about the total costs of enrollment by instructing its admissions representatives to inform prospective students only about the cost per credit hour without disclosing the total number of required credit hours;
- misled students about the transferability of credits and promised that certain credits could be transferred when they could not;
- misrepresented the potential for students to obtain employment in the field by failing to adequately disclose the fact that certain programs lacked the necessary programmatic accreditation; and,
- gave prospective students a distorted and inaccurate impression of graduate employment outcomes.
Why did Heald College close down?
In 2015, due to findings by the Department of Education of misrepresented job placement rates in certain programs at Corinthian Colleges, including Heald, after July 2010, the department of education made students of these programs eligible to have their debts canceled if they submitted an attestation form. Corinthian was assessed a fine of $30 million, and shut down all its campuses, including Heald, on April 27, 2015.
Corinthian had sold some of its campuses. At the time of closure, in addition to its online program, Heald had campuses in Hawaii, Oregon, and ten locations in California:
- Concord
- Fresno
- Hayward
- Milpitas/San Jose
- Modesto/Salida
- Rancho Cordova
- Roseville
- Salinas
- San Francisco
- Stockton
How to get Heald College Loan Forgiveness in 2019.
Now there are two options for you to possibly get a full student loan discharge and hopefully a refund on any payment made toward your student loan.
The Borrowers Defense To Repayment.
Anyone who attended a for-profit school and committed fraud either by lying about their accreditation or false advertising about job placement or any other type of fraud against them is eligible for loan forgiveness or loan discharge via The Borrowers Defense To Repayment.
This program was created by the Federal Government to protect students who were defrauded by their college institution with job placements and incentives to enroll in their college.
Keep in mind that you will be filing a claim against the school and will need to support and link all the college fraudulent activities with your personal situation. This mean that all you need to do is prove that the college lied to you and explain why you deserve to receive a discharge.
Also be aware this application requires time because you only have one chance, making sure you do it correctly will help you have a good chance of having your student loan forgiven.
Examples of For-Profit Colleges Illegal Marketing Activities.
- Misrepresenting their job placement rates. For example, telling prospective students that 100% of their graduates in a particular field could find a job within the first month after graduation
- Misrepresenting the quality of a program by telling students that they will be able to easily pass licensure exams in their field after completing a degree from Heald College
- Pressuring vulnerable, low-income students into taking out huge loans in order to pay the tuition cost for one of their sub-standard education programs
There are more examples that can be use to support your claim but these are one of the main and most important one.
Did you experience one of these marketing activities? If yes, you need to file an application as soon as possible!
The Closed School Loan Discharge Program.
As I mentioned above, there are two ways to receive student loan forgiveness as a former student of Heald College, so if you don’t feel that the school defrauded you and therefore don’t think you’ll qualify for the Borrower’s Defense program, then have no fear, because there is another way.
The Closed School Loan Discharge Program is your second best way to qualify for a Heald College discharge, and it was created for students who were still attending the school when it shut down.
The nice thing about Closed School Loan Discharges is that you don’t have to do any legal wrangling or convincing via arguments and evidence because Closed School Discharges is a binary thing – if you were a student who left the school no more than 120 days prior to it’s closing (or if you never left it at all, but were still studying at the time of the closure), then you qualify for a complete student loan discharge.
And that’s a great thing for those of you who were left in the cold when Heald College shut their doors!
How Do I Apply for a Closed School Discharge?
To apply for the Closed School Loan Discharge program simply fill out the application and submit it to the people who service your loan.
The people who service your loan are the ones that send the money to via your student loan payments every month.
Every loan servicer has a different procedure in place for processing these applications, so you’ll need to find out what your servicer requires before you can determine how to proceed.
After you submit your Closed School Loan Discharge application, your servicer is legally obligated to inform you of their process, and then as long as you qualify for the discharge, and you follow their instructions on what to do next, you should get your debt fully forgiven.
Conclusion
Finally, remember every case is different and if you still unsure of what options you have, a trusted and professional assistance with a free consultation to help you better understand your options can help you make a decision.
