ITT Tech is the latest casualty of the federal for-profit college crackdown

Students will have to find the "jobs of tomorrow" somewhere else.
 By 
Emma Hinchliffe
 on 
ITT Tech is the latest casualty of the federal for-profit college crackdown
ITT Tech, remembered for its '90s commercials with the technology of the day, is closing down. Credit: Getty Images

ITT Technical Institute, the for-profit college best known by some for its '90s commercials, is officially shutting its doors.

The school fell victim to a federal crackdown on for-profit colleges. Last week, the U.S. Department of Education banned ITT Tech from enrolling new students using federal financial aid funds. The school was first placed under heightened federal oversight in 2014.

As part of federal sanctions against it, ITT Tech had to increase its surety funds, held by the Department of Education for liabilities related to its investigations into the school, to 40 percent of all Title IV aid the school received in 2015, or $2.4 million.


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The Department of Education said students already enrolled could continue their classes at ITT Tech. But the sanctions proved too much for ITT Tech to bear.

"The actions of and sanctions from the US Department of Education have forced us to cease operations of the ITT Technical Institutes, and we will not be offering our September quarter," the school wrote in a press release Tuesday. "We reached this decision only after having exhausted the exploration of alternatives, including transfer of the schools to a non-profit or public institution."

ITT enrolls 45,000 students at its 130 campuses and online. According to the Department of Education, the school reported $850 million in revenue in 2015, $580 million of which came from federal aid money.

ITT drew students in part through its ads, which showed potential students the technical "jobs of tomorrow" that an ITT degree would qualify them for.

An ITT degree wasn't totally useless, unlike degrees from other for-profit institutions, but increased regulations surrounding the recruitment and loan practices of all for-profit institutions still doomed the school.

The federal government required ITT to develop "teach-out agreements" to allow students to finish their studies elsewhere in the event the school shut its doors.

Now students will have to transfer their credits, with ITT closed for good.

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Emma Hinchliffe

Emma Hinchliffe is a business reporter at Mashable. Before joining Mashable, she covered business and metro news at the Houston Chronicle.

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