The U.S. Division of Schooling introduced Tuesday it’s discharging $3.9 billion in federal loans taken out by college students who attended the now-defunct ITT Technical Institute chain of for-profit faculties.

The debt cancellation advantages about 208,000 individuals who attended ITT campuses between 2005 and 2016, when the corporate, which as soon as operated 130 campuses nationwide, went out of enterprise. The settlement can be open to former college students who haven’t but utilized for a borrower protection, officers stated.

A number of federal and state investigations through the years concluded that ITT Tech defrauded college students with lofty claims of post-graduation job placement and profession earnings, encouraging them to take out high-cost loans that left them saddled with long-term debt. The corporate was sued in 2014 by the Client Monetary Safety Bureau, which finally received judgments towards ITT Tech and a number of other different corporations that helped the for-profit faculty handle its mortgage packages.

“It’s time for scholar debtors to cease shouldering the burden from ITT’s years of lies and false guarantees,” Schooling Secretary Miguel Cardona stated in a press launch.

In the identical announcement, the division stated it’s taking a separate motion towards DeVry College, the still-operating for-profit faculty, ordering it to pay $24 million to cowl authorized borrower protection claims. The Schooling Division canceled these loans in February, after discovering that DeVry had additionally enticed college students with claims like 90% job placement inside six months. Federal officers additionally authorized mortgage discharges for about 100 former college students of the Kaplan Profession Institute, which additionally wooed debtors with guarantees about future employment.

The Schooling Division’s newest transfer continues a string of actions taken to alleviate scholar debt for individuals who attended for-profit, usually primarily on-line faculties. In early June, it canceled almost $6 billion in loans taken out by a couple of half-million former college students who attended the now-defunct Corinthian Schools; earlier this month, a federal choose in California gave preliminary approval to a settlement that can discharge one other $6 billion for college kids of about 100 on-line and for-profit colleges that defrauded their clients.