After nearly 50 years of service, ITT Technical Institute shut its doors nationwide.
The closure impacts more than 8,000 ITT Tech employees nationwide and about 2,000 students in Ohio.
Mike Traina, the Dean of the Columbus school, says he was surprised to see the doors locked, but is more concerned about his students.
“I have four-year students who are about to graduate and are a few credits short [and] I can’t imagine what they are going through. It makes me upset they will have to go elsewhere,” he said.
Nursing students like Mekaylah Hyatt are left to wonder ‘what now?’
“It's definitely a disappointment because it took me a long time to get into nursing,” she said.
She attends the ITT school in Hilliard. She said she had a feeling something wasn't right but had no idea it would lead to this.
“The dean actually quit a few days ago and a couple of other teachers quit so it was hit or miss about what they were telling students. They would tell me one thing, another student another thing,” Hyatt said.
What the Department of Education found was that school recruiters preyed on students who didn't understand the nature of taking on debt to pay for school and shouldn't have been taking on a technical degree.
Dean Traina says that's news to him.
“I think our recruiters are pretty darn ethical and tell students what their obligations are,” he said.
But there were other issues facing ITT according to John Ware who oversees Ohio's career colleges and schools.
“I think they didn't have the money, so if they were going to be required to post that letter of credit, it was going to force them out of business,” he said.
He says students have two options: they can transfer, known as a ‘teach out’, or a student loan discharges through the US Department of Education.
Ware said students who are veterans face other issues.
ITT sent out the following press release:
"It is with profound regret that we must report that ITT Educational Services, Inc. will discontinue academic operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes permanently after approximately 50 years of continuous service. With what we believe is a complete disregard by the U.S. Department of Education for due process to the company, hundreds of thousands of current students and alumni and more than 8,000 employees will be negatively affected.
The actions of and sanctions from the U.S. Department of Education have forced us to cease operations of the ITT Technical Institutes, and we will not be offering our September quarter. We reached this decision only after having exhausted the exploration of alternatives, including transfer of the schools to a non-profit or public institution.
These unwarranted actions, taken without proving a single allegation, are a "lawless execution," as noted by a recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal. We were not provided with a hearing or an appeal. Alternatives that we strongly believe would have better served students, employees, and taxpayers were rejected. The damage done to our students and employees, as well as to our shareholders and the American taxpayers, is irrevocable.
We believe the government's action was inappropriate and unconstitutional, however, with the ITT Technical Institutes ceasing operations, it will now likely rest on other parties to understand these reprehensible actions and to take action to attempt to prevent this from happening again."