Politics1 min read

Their colleges closed, but the government refuses to erase their debts, lawsuit says

By · Via NPR · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The federal challenge centers on a January 2025 decision by the Biden administration that expanded the eligibility window for closed school discharges under exceptional circumstances. Although standard regulations require students to have departed no more than six months prior to a shutdown, the revised policy reached back to May 2015 for attendees of institutions like Brooks Institute. The Trump administration subsequently denied applications under this rule, claiming the outgoing administration enacted unlawful expansions shortly before leaving office. However, previous records show the Trump administration utilized that exact same statutory authority to broaden debt relief eligibility ba…

Key points

  • The Department of Education is facing litigation over its refusal to honor expanded close…: The Department of Education is facing litigation over its refusal to honor expanded closed school loan discharges.
  • Standard federal rules require students to be enrolled within six months of closure, but…: Standard federal rules require students to be enrolled within six months of closure, but exceptional circumstances provisions allow extended timelines.
  • Officials are challenging the previous administration's use of authority that the Trump a…: Officials are challenging the previous administration's use of authority that the Trump administration itself exercised during 2019.

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Their colleges closed, but the government refuses to erase their debts, lawsuit says

Kendrick Gaussoin remembers it all so clearly — the August day a decade ago when his dream of becoming a professional photographer suddenly collapsed.

He was driving to the Ventura, Calif., campus of Brooks Institute, the private, for-profit college where he'd been working on a bachelor's degree in photography. When he pulled up, he was surprised to find classmates and friends milling outside. The school's doors were chained.

"It was very eerie," he remembers. "Everyone was crying. Everyone felt like they'd lost everything."

Brooks had suddenly been shut down by its parent company, leaving Gaussoin and some of his classmates with enormous student loan debts and no clear path to a degree.

"I was completely discouraged," Gaussoin remembers. "I basically gave up, and I've spent the past nine years really just trying my best to move forward."

Today, though, Gaussoin is revisiting what happened to him at Brooks — and is trying to get his student loans erased.

For more than three decades, federal law has required…

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