State Wants Debt Erased For Students Of Shuttered For-Profit

Maura Healey (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is asking federal officials to forgive loans for 4,400 students who attended a for-profit college that admitted to misleading students.

Healey filed a petition Tuesday asking the U.S. Department of Education to cancel federal loans taken out by students who attended the American Career Institute, which operated in Massachusetts and Maryland before closing in 2013. The school was later sued by Healey’s office over fraud allegations.

In court documents filed in June, the school acknowledged that it made inflated claims about the success of its students and failed to provide the training that it promised.

Healey previously asked the Education Department to forgive loans for students of the now-defunct California-based Corinthian Colleges chain. The department has erased debt for more than 11,000 Corinthian students nationally.