Today, a new lawsuit was filed against Navient, the student loan servicer formerly known as Sallie Mae.
The suit was filed by the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School on behalf of Jorge and Alicia Villalba. Jorge Villalba is a former student at the now-defunct ITT who borrowed more than $50,000 in federal student loans to attend the school. On top of that, Jorge also took on more than $43,000 in private student loans, some of which his mother, Alicia, co-signed.
During the Obama administration, numerous complaints were filed against ITT for making promises about employment and earnings of graduates that were untrue. In Jorge’s case, he says he was promised he would earn about $64,000 upon graduation and that large employers loved hiring ITT students.
Many investigations by the federal government and state attorneys general concluded that ITT had defrauded students and, in 2016, the U.S. Department of Education cut the school off from receiving federal student grants and loans. Like most for-profit colleges, federal student aid made up a large swath of their revenue and ITT was forced to shut its doors and file for bankruptcy.