As Occupy Wall Street marked its third anniversary on Wednesday, one offshoot group, Rolling Jubilee, made a historic achievement as the collective bought and abolished nearly $4 million in debt owed by thousands of students.
Rolling Jubilee, a project of Occupy Wall Street’s Strike Debt movement, acquired debt incurred by students of Everest College, one of the operations of Corinthian Colleges (CCI), an umbrella company of for-profit schools, and paid for it at a discounted rate, clearing a total of $3.85 million from the collective debt of 2,761 people.
“Debt is the tie that binds the 99 percent, whether you are a student delinquent on your student loans or a parent struggling to pay healthcare bills,” said Strike Debt activist Ann Larson. “Being forced into debt for basic social services is a systemic problem and the only solution is to respond collectively to create a new, equitable economy.”
Corinthian Colleges—and by extension, Everest—is facing multiple federal fraud investigations, as well as a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for its predatory lending practices, as roughly 90 percent of its funding comes from federal student loans, Rolling Jubilee said.
These schemes are not unique to CCI. As one investigation discovered in 2012, 30 for-profit college companies used more than 41 percent of those subsidies, like the Pell Grant, for marketing and profits, with only 17 percent going to actual instruction.
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Facing financial collapse, CCI announced in July that it may shut down or sell off its campuses to other for-profit college systems, which would leave approximately 72,000 students without degrees and out of their tuition money.
Further fueling Rolling Jubilee’s mission against Everest is CCI’s method of targeting low-income students, most often from minority backgrounds and areas where community college access is limited, the group said.
“Recruiters see low income students as easy prey, and the marketing is targeted to exploit their precarious circumstances,” Rolling Jubilee said in its announcement Wednesday. “Race, class, and gender markers are used to appeal to their dreams and their economic desperation.”
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