A for-profit university called American Intercontinental University will no longer collect student loans according to the lawsuit against the University. It means approximately 180,000 students will not repay their loans. According to the class-action lawsuit against American Intercontinental University, AIU has misled potential students. The University provided wrong information about the average salary of graduates, employment rates, and the value of their study programs.
Students will be able to benefit from forgiveness. But at the same time, only students who took loan directly from Career Education Corporation. It means if you are American Intercontinental University students and received an institutional student loan, you may qualify for the forgiveness. Private student loans or Federal student loans will not benefit from the discharge program.
In other words, you will erase your student loan if you take it from the Career Education Corporation. If you have a Federal or Private loan from American Intercontinental University, you might need to search for other ways to erase your student loan debt.
Terms of a class-action lawsuit against American Intercontinental University
Lawsuit settlement has enforced American Intercontinental University to stop collecting loans it has offered to its students. Additionally, the AIU class-action lawsuit has asked to contact university Credit Bureaus to remove all remaining debt from students’ credit reports. It is an excellent opportunity for borrowers who took a loan from Career Education Corporation for attending American Intercontinental University. Especially if you were having a hard time with a student loan repayment plan, you would erase all your debt. We want to mention that American Intercontinental University is not closing.
But the University is starting to operate more transparently about the education it offers to its students. According to a class-action lawsuit against American Intercontinental University, AIU has to provide several metrics to its potential students who are going to enroll in its classes.
From now on, the University should present a document to potential students who mention several essential information about the degree. The report will include the current employment rate of job, cost of the program, and average earnings of recent graduates. The data will allow future students to evaluate the desired program better and will help them to make better decisions.
How this lawsuit helps student loan debt crisis?
From our perspective, the lawsuit will play an essential role when you look at the more significant student loan crisis. After the AIU class-action lawsuit, other institutions will also be eager to comply with the regulations and make their actions more transparent. They will try to follow the rules in order not to face these kinds of lawsuit problems. Additionally, this class-action lawsuit against American Intercontinental University has created more impact than previous ones.
The main reason is that new rules force not only universities but also parent companies which run those universities. Before, when universities were misbehaving, the government immediately shut down them. However, the parent companies who were running those universities were continuing to operate and maintain their scam operation under different university names.
In the case of American Intercontinental University, the parent company has to change its student admission strategy. Also, the incident triggered Class-Action Lawyers to investigate other companies which continue their illegal operations.
The one thing that the settlement lacks is it only covers above mentioned institutional loans. It means students who took a loan from federal or private student loans forgiveness could not erase their debt.
What if you have Federal Student Loan from AIU?
If your loan is from Federal loan programs, then you will not be able to qualify for fully discharge or forgiveness. But the good news is that you might be eligible for Borrower’s Defence to Repayment (BDRP). BDRP is a Federal Student Loan Forgiveness Program which aims to help students who suffer from university scams and false statements. The only way to qualify for this program is to convince the Department of Education about your student loan. You need to demonstrate that you take this student loan because of university lies and false promises. Additionally, you should mention that you would not take the loan if you knew the scam actions beforehand.
The best part of the class-action lawsuit against American Intercontinental University is that in the end, the parent company has admitted its fraud actions against students. Most of the fraud actions were including false statements about the employment rate, average graduate incomes, effectiveness of their education program. You use all these points to qualify for the full discharge program. We recommend all students to apply for the Borrower’s Defense Discharge (BDD) program. You need to apply through an application which includes how the University lied to you and convinced you to take the loan even though you did not need that loan.
About Borrower’s Defence Discharge Program
In 2019, BDAR remains the most effective program to eliminate student loans. Students do not need to pay any debt if they qualify for the program. But before you get too excited about the program, you need to note that application is eligible only for Federal Student Loans. Also, qualifying for the program is not an easy and short process. You need to convince the Department of Education about the scam actions of your University.
As you can see, the discharge program is an excellent option for students who want to eliminate their student loans. Primarily if you studied at one of the prominent for-profit universities and took a colossal student loan to attend the classes, you could benefit from this discharge program. But consider that Department of Education receives so many applications and it could take two years to get a response. Therefore, sending the request and waiting for a response is not the best plan.
If you have huge problems with a student loan, you can consider hiring a student loan relief agency to help you in this process. The people working in these agencies deal with student debt every day. Therefore, they could analyze your situation carefully and offer you the best solution.
During previous years, people thought that the Defence Program is suitable for all kinds of student loans. However, that is not the case. Because you could only benefit from discharge program if your University has committed illegal actions.
Who qualifies for the discharge program?
The only way to qualify for the BDAR is to demonstrate that you took student loan because of misleading information by your University. You could manage to prove it by showing deceptive or false advertisement of American Intercontinental University. Note that your aim should be demonstrating that the University has done illegal action to you personally. As a result of this unlawful action, you have decided to take the student loan. We have mentioned earlier that only Federal Student Loans will qualify for the student debt discharge program. However, borrowers should follow even stricter rules to be eligible for the program.
Now all Federal Student Loans will be eligible to erase the student debt. Only Direct Student Loans will manage to qualify for the program. Additionally, Federal Family Loans and Perkin Loans will be available for discharge program. But students need to consolidate them into a direct loan for being eligible. In case of a class-action lawsuit against American Intercontinental University, you need to take debt from Career Corporation Corporation.