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The government said it’s going to cancel $6 billion in student loans for people who went to the Art Institutes. These are colleges that shut down in 2023 because people said they were lying and cheating.

President Biden said the colleges tricked students into taking out big loans by telling them lies. Now, the government is erasing those loans for about 317,000 people who went to any Art Institute campus between 2004 and 2017.

The government decided to do this after checking proof from lawyers in Massachusetts, Iowa, and Pennsylvania. They looked into complaints that the colleges were being dishonest and even took them to court.

They found out that the colleges were lying about how many students got good jobs after graduating. They said over 80% of students got jobs in their chosen field, but really it was less than 57%.

Also, the colleges lied about how much money their graduates made. They even included Serena Williams’ tennis salary in the numbers to make it seem like students would earn more after graduation.

Because of these lies, students took out a lot of loans for programs that didn’t help them get good jobs. Now, the government is going to cancel those loans.

They will email the borrowers who will have their loans canceled, and they don’t have to do anything. Any payments they already made will be given back to them.

The Art Institutes used to have lots of campuses in different cities like New York and Los Angeles. But the company that owned them had legal problems and started closing campuses in 2018. Last year, they closed the last eight.

The Biden administration has been canceling student loans from different programs, even though they are still working on a bigger plan to cancel more loans. So far, they have canceled almost $160 billion in loans for people who work for the government and for people who were tricked by their colleges.