If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.
In May 2024, I had over $50,000 in student loans forgiven by the Biden administration. That’s because my college education was a fraud. I was one of the two million students recruited by for-profit colleges with promises of education and employment. Later I became an instructor for another for-profit institution. Today, both are defunct.
In 1996 I was a high-school student struggling with academics. As graduation neared, I was worried. I did not do well in traditional classrooms, but I had been told that I had some aptitude in art. I enjoyed art class, but I didn’t understand how to make art into a career.
Then a recruiter from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (AIP) visited my school and described a “hands on” college experience that appealed to me. Later that year, along with hundreds of other kids from across the Midwest, I attended a weeklong summer visit to AIP.
I was introduced to a program called industrial design technology: the study of everything from movie special-effects makeup to automotive design to commercial product design. I also learned, because it was repeated and reinforced by recruiters and faculty members, that the Art Institute of Pittsburgh had an 87-percent placement rate within a student’s field of study after graduation.
My parents had watched me struggle in school and they worried, as parents do, about the college options available to me. AIP’s “hands on” nontraditional setting sounded perfect. The 87-percent job-placement rate was a prominent discussion point as we considered the school. To me, the Art Institute sounded like a dream come true. It was the first time I had ever felt enthusiastic about education. And 87 percent sounds a lot like 100 percent to a teenager.
It was easy to ignore early clues that the Art Institute of Pittsburgh had misrepresented both the quality of its education and its job-placement rate.
I graduated high school in 1997 and enrolled in the Art Institute of Pittsburgh’s associate program in industrial design technology. My parents agreed to pay for my education on the condition that I pay them back after being one of the 87 percent of students to find a job. I did not have to take out student loans for the first part of my secondary education, and I am eternally grateful to my parents for that.
I was proud to have gotten into college. AIP had given me hope, and with hope came rose-colored glasses. It was easy to ignore early clues that the Art Institute of Pittsburgh had misrepresented both the quality of its education and its job-placement rate.
An early hint that AIP was focused on recruiting as many students as possible occurred when I found part-time employment with AIP’s peer-to-peer tutoring program. I, a student who had spent the previous 12 years working twice as hard to get half as far as my classmates, was now earning a paycheck helping other college kids pass their courses.
I thought I was helping, and it wasn’t until years later that I understood that the students I tutored desperately needed remediation. These students had been failed by their K-12 systems, lacked the tools to succeed at secondary education and, like me, had few options. AIP had found a market of worried teenagers facing an uncertain future and held out to them the promise of an education and a job. It would enroll anyone who could pay tuition. The support of peer-to-peer tutoring wouldn’t guarantee they would eventually graduate, but it would help prolong their tuition payments.
Another clue that AIP was fudging its employment statistics was that its employment-assistance office had placed many recently graduated graphic-design students at Kinko’s in minimum-wage jobs. These graduates being counted as having been placed in their field of study were occupying jobs that require no education whatsoever. People who had enrolled and studied illustration and graphic design, having been promised a career in those fields, were now employed making photocopies.
Then there was the fact that nearly all of AIP’s faculty members were also graduates of the school. There were some good faculty at AIP, but the revolving door of students who became teachers helped AIP pad its employment numbers. After all, if you had a degree from AIP and returned to the school shortly after graduation to teach art, weren’t you employed in your field?
Most programs had a dropout rate of 50 percent or more. This high attrition rate was attributed to AIP’s rigorous academic standards. It was, in fact, an indictment of the poor quality of the education. Students unprepared for college had been recruited en masse, paid tens of thousands of dollars, and then dropped out.
We students waffled between disillusionment and hope. What we experienced worried us, but the faculty and staff reassured us. How could a school be bad if graduates had an 87-percent placement rate?
I graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 2000 with an associate degree in industrial design and earned a second associate degree in media arts and animation. I was indeed part of the lucky 87 percent who found employment, as a media-arts teacher at the Pittsburgh Technical Institute (PTI). It was time for me to begin repaying my parents for their support.
PTI was another for-profit institution. Its leaders hoped to emulate AIP’s success by enticing a fresh crop of students into careers as web developers, videographers, and video-game artists. Now in my early 20s, I was proud and eager to help. Long after I left, PTI would change its name to Pittsburgh Technical College and become what has been referred to as a “covert for-profit” institution, a label for former for-profits that have converted to nonprofit status to avoid regulation and the bad press associated with for-profit education.
Students unprepared for college had been recruited en masse, paid tens of thousands of dollars, and then dropped out.
In order to improve its appeal to prospective students, PTI began pursuing accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. One requirement: All faculty members would need to possess or be pursuing a bachelor’s degree. As a condition of my employment, therefore, I was required to continue my education.
I quickly discovered that none of my 117 AIP college credits would transfer, and few colleges had class schedules that accommodated working adults. I would have to start my secondary education from scratch, and I would have to find a college that offered classes at night.
But there was an alternative: In 2003, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh began offering bachelor’s degree programs. My previously earned credits would transfer, and many classes were either online or at night. As a working adult and part-time student, this seemed like the best option.
In 2004 I settled on a degree that would accept most of my credit transfers, and I enrolled in the Art Institute of Pittsburgh’s program in game art and design. This time I applied for federal student loans.
I felt trapped. The credits I had already accumulated were not transferable to any legitimate university. I had to continue my education as a condition of my employment. There were no other schools that offered night-only bachelor’s programs, and even if there were, I’d be starting from scratch. The Art Institute of Pittsburgh was not just the least worst of a few bad options, it was familiar, and it was easy to recall the marketing material: No matter what, there was still that 87-percent placement rate among graduates.
We AIP alumni were proud to be among those who graduated, despite having nearly worthless degrees. There was a camaraderie built on shared hardship, desperation, and resignation to our fate. Although we knew many graduates with terrible luck, there was always a handful of anecdotal success stories. We would hold those exceptions up as examples and ignore our own experience: The Art Institute was an expensive waste of time.
At night, I worked on a degree that fell woefully short of anything approaching industry preparedness. My classes were elementary. I regarded the degree I was earning as pageantry necessary to satisfy an abstract requirement for my employment. The debt I accumulated was a necessary evil. If I dropped out, I would lose my job.
By day, I taught multimedia. I loved teaching, but I hated being a teacher at a for-profit school. I and my co-faculty did not see ourselves as villains enabling profiteers to take advantage of vulnerable students. We did everything we could to provide our students with the best education and industry preparedness.
Keeping students from dropping out at all costs was the Pittsburgh Technical Institute’s priority. The faculty and administration often clashed on this subject. More than once, I caught students plagiarizing. The written policy for plagiarism was course failure. But since failing a course usually resulted in the student’s dropping out, the administration would pressure me to ignore the plagiarism, extend the course deadline, and allow cheating students to resubmit their work.
Whenever we were faced with a student who was considering dropping out, we were instructed by the administration to remind the student of Pittsburgh Technical Institute’s 96-percent placement rate. The institute promised that, no matter what a student’s situation, if they stuck with PTI, they would almost certainly find a job.
Outside of work and school, I invested my time in teaching myself code. I did not want to stay with my current employer forever, but as far as the rest of the world was concerned, I was nearly unemployable. I had earned two worthless degrees and was working on a third. I relied on books and tutorials to learn valuable skills in web development, marketing, and communication. I was oblivious to the fact that the Art Institute of Pittsburgh should have been teaching me these skills.
Eventually, a friend who worked for a startup helped me get a job with his employer. Elated to close the current chapter of my career, I left PTI at the end of the term. I finished my bachelor’s degree shortly thereafter and started making payments on my student loans. Life went on, and I continued to improve my technical skills in my new position.
The following years were marked by ups and downs. I made student-loan payments, but the Great Recession forced me to apply for deferment — an agreement with the loan manager in which payments are paused, but interest continues to accrue on the principal. It took years for me to begin making payments again, and when I was able, I owed more than I had originally borrowed.
By 2015 I had left my position at the startup and begun work for a bank as an interface developer. My student-loan payments were periodic, and the principal continued to grow. I resigned myself to the idea that I would never be able to pay them off. Even though I was employed, I simply never made enough money to make regular payments.
That same year, after four whistle-blower lawsuits and over 40 lawsuits from states, the federal government found that Education Management Corporation (EDMC), the owner of the Art Institutes (among other institutions), had engaged in fraudulent recruitment practices. This meant that Art Institute of Pittsburgh students and alumni became eligible for a provision in the federal student-aid program called “borrower defense to repayment” — established back in 1994.
I had grown cynical about the education system. My experience as a student and instructor had made me think that secondary education was largely a scam. I doubted I would see any debt relief, but there wasn’t any harm in trying.
Then, in 2017, President Donald J. Trump appointed Betsy DeVos, a billionaire investor in for-profit colleges, as secretary of education. Among her policies was to continue collecting payments on student loans owed by students of defunct for-profit schools. This practice was in violation of federal law; DeVos was fined over $100,000. She also stopped or delayed processing of borrower defense applications.
My loan-discharge application became one of millions that were held up, waiting to be processed. Although I was eligible, the federal government had chosen to ignore its own laws.
The next year, EDMC filed for bankruptcy. The Art Institutes chain survived for a time under new ownership, but it, too, eventually closed. EDMC’s entire for-profit empire was now defunct. This would be the first shuttered institution listed on my résumé, but it would not be the last.
Time passed. My student loans grew. My career was defined by two decades of raises that did not match inflation punctuated by periodic pay cuts and salary freezes resulting from global economic catastrophes. I did not make enough money to resume payments, and I had no reasonable expectation that that would ever change.
In 2024 came unexpected news. After working through the backlog of borrower defense claims that had been paused during the previous administration, the Biden administration discharged student loans for over 300,000 student borrowers who had attended the Art Institutes.
Now, as a 45-year-old with a family and mortgage, I felt a relief so intense I couldn’t bring myself to actually believe it was real. My reflex was to regard the email as a scam. But after some research and confirmation from the media, I came to realize it was real.
Partisan voices quickly weighed in. Borrower defense had existed for three decades, yet some politicians were angry. People who had been cheated by for-profit institutions and received loan discharges as a result were getting a taxpayer-funded handout, according to the critics.
My decision to attend the Art Institute of Pittsburgh was based on fraud. My education did not open the opportunities that college promises. It burdened me with debt and restricted what I could do to pursue further education. I was tremendously lucky to have found a job after graduation, but I am the exception, not the rule. Many of my classmates never found work in their chosen field. If I were able to do it all over again, I would not have attended AIP. I would have looked more closely at a community college or trade school. I have found some measure of success in spite of my college education, not because of it. Since the age of 17, I’ve navigated a confusing labyrinth of useless college credits, endured decades of accrued interest, struggled to find jobs, and been thwarted by federal government red tape. And now I am vilified by a political faction and a huge swath of the American public.
It wasn’t just the money that was stolen from me — it was time. And I am one of the lucky ones.
In June, Pittsburgh Technical College, where I taught others like me, announced it was closing. Its accreditation agency placed the for-profit school on probation, and the students are now facing uncertainty.
PTC will soon be the second defunct educational institution on my résumé.
Many PTC students took out federal student loans to pay for their education. The circumstances are different, but the results are the same: Thousands of students will become eligible for loan forgiveness. This time it will be under a provision called closed-school discharge rather than borrower defense. Those applications will be reviewed by the Education Department.
I hope their applications are processed quickly, and by a secretary of education whose wealth is not built upon the fraud of for-profit education.