Theres tons of help by fellow victims. The education was minimal to basics of how programs worked. The art institute has been hit hard by a lawsuit filed against it by students and parents who lost money due to their hefty tuition fees. I transferred to the school from an accredited sister campus in Seattle, which was at the time accredited. But before you get too excited, heres the most important part of the Borrowers Defense process: its extremely important that you link your Borrowers Defense claim to the Art Institutes lawsuit and the fraudulent activity that theyve been accused of performing. Do you think this might be enough? Michael Zhang. The recruiter told me about job placement help and being able to get jobs after graduating. I even asked them to send me the Art Institute issued bill with all of my information on it. Because most people who have their student loans forgiven arent going to have that kind of cash laying around, I have started another site to help people better understand and get rid of their IRS debt, called Forget Tax Debt, which you can find here. Required fields are marked *. The loan amount was for 9k and Has doubled since then due to me as a single parent struggling to make payments etc. The lawsuit claims that the defendants have not complied with the terms of their agreements. Until they sign the papers to get rid of the program entirely, students of the Art Institute can still benefit from loan forgiveness through the Borrowers Defense Against Repayment. I have brief emails from the Assistant admissions director when we first set up the information meeting and can also provide her name, that is all i really have though. I felt so guilty about them footing the bill, I took a semester off to reaccess what to do with my life. I would absolutely pursue this in your case, and just make sure to provide as much evidence as possible for your story. Contact the Student Loan Ombudsman Group and ask if they can assist you with the legal fallout here. If you can find any claims on the site that speak to these sorts of false promises or illegal marketing activities, and if you can include screenshots of those in your application, then you are truly golden and nearly certain to get an approval! I entered New England Institute of Art from 2000 being told by the recruiters about the job placements and salary expectations. I joined my classmates in filing a class-action lawsuit against the school for deceptive and fraudulent practices. Thats hard to say. Yes I want to join this lawsuit and would like to know how because I never was so deceived so badly that my loans are still not paid off after about the last 10 years and being lied to as well. To be clear, I suggest that EVERYONE applying for BDAR spend a bit of time playing with the Internet Archives Wayback Machine, looking at old versions of the schools website from around the time that they started thinking about applying for the school. Can someone contact me in regards to this. And because the Art Institute has clearly violated many laws, anyone who took out a student loan to attend one of their schools is basically automatically eligible for the Borrowers Defense Against Repayment program, which offers complete student loan forgiveness. I did here is their response If deemed eligible, a parent PLUS loan can be discharged under provisions of Borrower Defense to Repayment. There was a class action law suite back in the late 90s if I recall correctly. You are one of the ONLY PEOPLE to ever come back and let me know what you were told! Thanks. I have every correspondence with this school as well as several disheartening emails to Pittsburgh about the conditions of the campus here as far as tech and structure. Read through my Guide and look at the comments Ive responded to others asking the same question. while attending, the forst 18 months focused almost entirely around print (like news papers) and mark-up and the like. I am helping a friend whos student loan is currently in default. Bogus and unfair nobody care about the older students. To be honest Im just not sure that this is a good case for a BDAR Discharge. Im hoping its temporary. Are you familiar with this company? These school only offered the bachelors, so that already meant more time and money. Provide as much context as you possibly can! Im curious to know if youve heard of the credit weight change per class that the network decided to enforce mid quarter about two years before they closed. If youre not sure who your loan servicer is, its the company who receives your monthly student loan payments. A group of former Art Institute of Colorado and Illinois students has brought a case against the Department of Education and Secretary Betsy DeVos. I was never told that they acted completely differently and they caused me great confusion when Sallie Mae and friends started hounding me for a MASSIVE precedent of my income. Some illegal activities charged by DOJ include fraudulent recruiting and unlawful marketing. I graduated in DEC 2009, Deborah Holder was the advisor who was suppose to help me with job placement never did. As a result of the change in ownership, the Higher Learning Commission, the accreditor for the two Art Institutes named in the lawsuit, downgraded their accreditation status . You can reach them at 1-877-317-0455. The loans have been moved through several different lenders and now is being managed my ED Financial. Id look into filing a BDAR Discharge Application against AI. If you can find a good student loan lawyer, come back and give me their contact information. The information pertaining to demonstrate that ultimately depends upon possession of art institute lawsuit progress reports prompted several occasions and. They told me that was perfect anyway because I could receive grant money which would help pay for my classes. Litigation Lawyer in Provo, UT. Weve made our information as easy to digest as possible to help you determine what youre entitled to. What Went Wrong After Graduation? Use quotes to show exactly what they said and make it very, very clear that you were being promised something specific here; a set salary. We were also told by the president of the school that we could go back at any point and study new programs that were not taught at that time. Anyways, I rant you know all this stuff, Im sure. Am I eligible to join this lawsuit? Hi, can you please tell me more information on how to join the class action lawsuit for the Art Institute? Download the application form, fill it out, and submit it to your loan servicer. Several of their lawsuits involve the use of illegal marketing tactics. Because of this change, which no one at the school could really explain to me in depth, I had to repeat classes that I had already taken. Thats a good question, and you MIGHT still be eligible. Whatever you do, dont file a claim anywhere else! I was limited to no experience in design and marketing, I could not find a job that I qualified for. It has been over a year and a half since graduation and while he diligently searches daily for (and has applied for) any and every job he can find in his chosen field and has not had even a single interview to date. I graduated from Argosy Univ in 2009 in the Psychology program. What happened next? In September 2016, the US Department of Education revoked the schools accreditation. I heard they might lose accreditation. I took 2 quarters off. Hi my name is Jeanette Dennis. However, an applicant can wait an entire year for the application to be processed. To receive your PSLF, you must pay 120 points. In a nutshell, if you got $100,000 in debt forgiven and your taxable income was 30%, you wouldnt ever have to pay another student loan payment, but you would owe $30,000 to the IRS, and itd be due all at once unless you worked out a payment plan with them. If neither of the above exclusions apply to you, and you were a student of the school when it closed (or left near enough to the closing date), then you stand a very good chance of achieving Art Institute loan forgiveness via the Closed School Loan Discharge Program, and I would encourage you to apply for the benefit right away. Please advise. Reading your column has given me hope regarding my student loan debt. Those attorneys were just looking out for themselves Im sure they made out like bandits, taking something like 40-60% of the multi-million dollar settlement, while you all got a pittance. Unfortunately, you cannot apply for both programs. Its very, very hard to get refunds for any money already paid. It was from 2010-2014. It looks like nobody replies to these comments. The lawsuit is a class action suit against EDMC for violating consumer protection laws. These are the two general eligibility criteria for students under this program. Were you still a student at the time the school closed down? Please find below some of the necessary details you need to add to your application. For details on how this works, visit my page about Student Loan Forgiveness and Taxable Income. For your Private loan, I would recommend contacting McCarthy Law PLC, a group of attorneys who specialize in handling private student debt. Hello, I need information I was student till the end. Most people dont have anything written that proves they were defrauded. As a result, students may qualify for this settlement. Only the students who attended Brown Mackie College from 2006 to 2014 will have an opportunity to apply for loan forgiveness. The parent company of the institute is also a defendant. So now I have 88k in school loans with no degree and the credits are useless. I had dropped out of high school because of family illnesses and had planned to get my GED until the recruiter I was working with, which I dont remember the name of and cannot find the paperwork for (may have been thrown out during a garage flood or lost between 3 moves since then plus i worked with 3 separate recruiters in a 6 month span for that school) pushed for me to go to a scam school which he, and they, claimed was an actual school and would give me a fast diploma and my mother and i fell for it. Click the links above to be taken to the section of this Guide that details the specifics for each program. Yeah, the lawsuit seems to still be going. After reading your blog, it appears that I have a better chance of having the loan forgiven by using the BDRD form. Hi Tim, For some odd reason, the FSA website redirects you to an error message when you actually try to submit an application. Hello, My loan (daughters loan) is with Great Lakes and attended The Art Institute in Phoenix AZ, 2010-2012. Maybe? I just feel cheated. I attended 2010-2011 graduated June 2012 associate in baking and pastry. I was in an even worse situation and I still suffer from that accident today. Youre going to have to look into other options here, and Im sorry to say that theres very little available to people with Private debt. In hindsight, I figured out that it was likely due to the fact that they would have made less money off of me if I went into game programming; they only offered an Associates for that at the time I attended; but if they kept me there for longer to get a Bachelors they would have me up to my arse in debt. My last quarter there was July-Sept 2018 with the school closing in December 2018. I graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in june of 94 dont know if Im eligible for any repayment, If you are covered in the class, youre automatically in it. These are : With these three requirements in mind, you can confidently determine your full eligibility if you happen to qualify for the program. I called AI and was told I had a $3000 balance on my account and thats why it was being withheld. They completely robbed me blind and the runaround kept me from even getting a degree.they say i owe them money for a class i never took and couldnt attend until i payed. . I attended the Art Institute of Fort Worth in 2011 and in 2013 they told everyone in my Interior Design program, the program will be getting shut down because there were not enough students in the program and the only options we had were to 1. transfer to another art institute 2. Great Lakes is a servicer of both types of loans, and if your loans are Private, then they probably wont be eligible for the Closed School Discharge or the Borrowers Defense to Repayment Discharge. Unfortunately, its extremely difficult to get a refund, especially if the money was paid in cash instead of via student loans. If you have student loans, you can pursue loan forgiveness through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. I am not having the credits transfer to another school since the AI say I owe them money for one course and I wont pay them since they mess up my Financial aid and left me with a big bill for Student Loan which I am having trouble paying. The Art Institutes class-action lawsuit against the EDMC was filed for $11 billion. I do think this might be enough, and I would absolutely pursue BDAR. Any advise that could help would be amazing. No job placement assistance. If I were you, I think Id push for a Closed School Student Loan Discharge and see if it works out. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2022 OULegal. Your BDAR Discharge Application should get approved since you spent the extra time to gather HARD PROOF against the school! NOTE: McCarthy Law can ONLY help with Private student loans. She assured me a loan would not be taken out in my name. If you an find hard evidence of their claims, thatll help with BDAR tremendously. The plaintiff will only lose if the defendant fails to comply with the laws of the state. I need to be apart of this class action law suit as I went to Art Institute of Ohio-Cincinnati and the school isnt even open anymore. Low and behold through actually building up experience first hand I can say without a doubt that a degree from that school is not enough to just become an interior designer. Where can I sign up for the lawsuit? So I pursue the online one. Students of the Art Institute can be a little lucky in . I would stick with the classics that we KNOW have gotten approvals false advertising, false promises, fraud. He is heart broken and we are being crushed by the debt due to a recent reduction in our own income.