Biden administration cancels $5.8 billion in student loan debt for former Corinthian students

The Department of Education announced Wednesday that it will cancel $5.8 billion in student loan debt for 560,000 borrowers who attended the now-defunct network of for-profit schools known as Corinthian Colleges.

The cancellation amounts to the largest one-time discharge ever made by the Department of Education.

Some of Corinthian's former students were already eligible for debt cancellation, but the new action will ensure that all borrowers who attended from Corinthian's founding in 1995 through its closure in April 2015 will get debt relief.

At its peak in 2010, Corinthian Colleges enrolled more than 110,000 students at 105 campuses, including some called Everest, Heald College or WyoTech. The Department of Education has found that Corinthian Colleges misled prospective students about the ability to transfer credits and falsified its job placement rate.

In 2013, Vice President Kamala Harris -- who was California's attorney general at the time -- sued Corinthian Colleges, alleging the school was engaging in deceptive and false advertising and recruitment. The lawsuit triggered other federal and state investigations that ultimately resulted in Corinthian selling most of its campuses in 2014 and closing the remaining ones in 2015.