The Biden administration said it will discharge a total of $238 million in student loan debt for those who attended a now-defunct beauty school that failed to teach them how to cut hair.
The U.S. Department of Education in 2016 stripped the Marinello Schools of Beauty, a for-profit school chain with 56 campuses across the nation, of federal funding because of “pervasive and widespread misconduct.”
According to the department, Marinello made “widespread, substantial misrepresentations” about the education it offered, and failed to train students in key cosmetology skills, such as how to cut hair.
“As a result, students would have found it extremely difficult to pass necessary state licensing tests and receive the promised return on their educational investment,” the department said, noting that class-action lawsuits filed in Nevada and California alleged that the school “used salons as profit centers and exploited students as a source of unpaid labor.”
…