The U.S. Education Department said it could offer debt relief for more students of Corinthian Colleges Inc., the for-profit career-college chain that closed in April and declared bankruptcy last month.
Students may be eligible for refunds if they attended a Corinthian school as of June 2014, when the department began limiting federal aid to the company. Typically, when a college closes, students who attended within the previous 120 days are eligible for refunds.
“You have to be made of stone not to feel for these students,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday on a call with reporters. “A lot of them ended up with huge debts and a degree that meant little to employers, if they got a degree at all.”
Former students of Corinthian, which operated Everest, WyoTech and Heald colleges, have mounted protests at being saddled with debt for worthless degrees. Corinthian agreed last July to sell or close its 107 campuses, in the biggest shutdown in U.S. higher education.
