University of Phoenix student loan forgiveness: $37 million dismissed, who qualifies? (2024)

Former students at the University of Phoenix may be eligible for part of $37 million in student loan forgiveness.

The debt cancellation covers more than 1,200 borrowers who were “deceived,” by the for-profit university, President Joe Biden said in a statement.

“These borrowers were cheated into believing that by attending the University of Phoenix they would have promising career prospects at Fortune 500 companies – yet those benefits and opportunities never existed,” Biden said.

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Forgiveness covers borrowers who enrolled in University of Phoenix between Sept. 21, 2012 and Dec. 31, 2014 and applied for a borrower defense loan discharge, which provides full discharge of federal loans for schools that engaged in misconduct. Borrowers will receive emails from the Department of Education in early October and no further action will be required for those students to receive refunds on any loan amounts paid.

In a statement, the department said it found a national ad campaign from Phoenix “misled prospective students by falsely representing that its partnerships with thousands of corporations, including Fortune 500 companies, would benefit students by, for example, giving them hiring preferences at those companies. In fact, Phoenix’s corporate partnerships provided no such benefits to students.”

Students who have not filed for borrower defense loan discharge must complete an application on the Federal Student Aid website.

In its own statement, the University of Phoenix said it disagreed with the allegations raised by the department and pointed out they were never tested in court.

“We stand behind our statement from Dec. of 2019 in which we admitted no wrongdoing in the Let’s Get Back to Work campaign, a single campaign that ran from late 2012 to early 2014. We encourage review of our statement and the ads on a University of Phoenix microsite,” the university said in a statement. “With respect the Borrower Defense to Repayment claims, the University of Phoenix takes student borrower complaints very seriously and has provided significant evidence to the Dept. of Ed refuting inaccurate, baseless, or incomplete claims. While the university is not against relief for borrowers who have valid claims, we intend to vigorously challenge each frivolous allegation and suspicious claim through every available legal avenue.”