The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators is meeting in New Orleans this week. The gathering has drawn protesters from around the country demanding relief from student loans at for-profit schools they say were deceptive and expensive.
Laura Hanna is a spokesperson for a group called Debt Collective. It’s aimed at organizing people from those targeted by for-profit colleges and lobbying for debt relief as a group.
“They were lied to and said that their lives would be better. They’d be making more money per hour. They would help with job placement and none of these things came true, of course. They received really poor education. They didn’t ever get any jobs out of it," she ssaid. "And on top of it the schools lied about these jobs that they were getting in order to maintain their subsidy.”
One of those students is Michael Adorno-Miranda from Colorado Springs. He attended an Everest College for computer information science from 2010 to 2012.
“This lifetime career placement service was only going to be utilized if you stayed in Colorado Springs and if you were totally OK with going for a job that has nothing to do with what you went to school for," he said, "which in this case was – working in a call center. For $37,152 they placed me at a call center.”
State attorneys general pressed the Education Department to help fix the problem. Corinthian Colleges was one of the nation’s largest operators of for-profit colleges and trade schools. It collapsed during a federal investigation, and shut down or sold 100 campuses.
