For-profit schools

The Office of the New York State Attorney General (OAG) has worked to help students and student-loan borrowers at for-profit colleges by cracking down on these colleges' predatory practices, examining potential abuses in student-loan debt collection, and holding the federal government to its legal duties to protect for-profit college students.

Cracking down on predatory for-profit schools

The OAG has sued a number of for-profit colleges and obtained millions of dollars in restitution and loan forgiveness for consumers who were the victims of these colleges’ predatory practices. Those practices included misrepresentations to prospective students about their graduates’ employment prospects and job-placement rates, pushing students to take out private student loans with their business partners, and other recruiting and enrollment abuses.

Holding the federal government to its legal duty to protect students

• The OAG issued guidance for federal student-loan borrowers who are in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. The OAG has urged the Department of Education, along with other Attorneys General, to expand the criteria to allow more consumers to be included in the program. The criteria had been severely narrowed by the previous Department of Education administration.
• The OAG sued the Department of Education for abandoning the Borrower Defense to Repayment rule, a rule that would help protect students and taxpayers from abuse by for-profit schools.
• The OAG also sued the Department of Education for refusing to enforce the Gainful Employment Rule.