ITT Educational Services closes all campuses

ITT Educational Services is shuttering its technical schools in one of the biggest college closures in American history. The company is blaming the Department of Education for demanding $153 million, nearly double ITT's cash on hand, in collateral to the government in case ITT suddenly failed, Bloomberg reports.

As a result, the for-profit college will close more than 130 campuses and 40,000 students will be left adrift. "We believe the government's action was inappropriate and unconstitutional," ITT said in a statement. ITT has faced allegations that it misled students into believing it had higher success rate placing graduates than it actually did, and the company was facing lawsuits; it has denied all such accusations.

As a result of the pending cases, the Education Department had restricted on ITT's access to federal aid. "The swift closure of all of its campuses should indicate exactly how far the company went to recruit students using federal aid," Gizmodo writes. "Of course, there's nothing wrong with providing federal loans to students who are seeking higher education, but ITT Tech often went a step further: The company's recruiters preyed on students who didn't understand the lifelong burden of debt and shouldn't have been seeking a technical degree."

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