-CNBC-
Shaun Joyce used to sit at his desk at The Art Institute of Charlotte in North Carolina, on edge. That's because a staff member could burst into his classroom at any moment and lead him on the "walk of death."
That was when students would be summoned to the for-profit school's financial aid office and told they'd "run out" of loans, Joyce said. Then the student would be informed that he or she needed to borrow more money immediately, or else leave the school.
"You never knew if you were coming back," Joyce, now 29, said.
On his way to pursuing his bachelor's degree in web design and interactive media at the Art Institute, a former unit of Education Management Corp., which was partially owned by Goldman Sachs at the time, Joyce received such an ultimatum. At one point, there were some 50 Art Institute campuses in operation.
Scared the school would not allow him to complete his degree, he signed up for another loan. But, realizing how unaffordable the school was becoming, he also decided to leave the program after two years instead of the four years he'd planned on.
The tab for his two-year associate's degree is nearly $90,000.
"I switched down to an associate's degree. Why is it this expensive?" he recalled telling the Art Institute staff at the time. "'I'm paying more than what was quoted to me for a bachelor's degree.'"
To make matters worse, Joyce has been unable to find a job in his field to repay that huge debt. During enrollment, Joyce claims that Art Institute employees had promised him they'd find him work, related to his studies, yet when he reached out to the school's career services department, a woman just sent him back job links on Craigslist.
"This school screwed me over," Joyce said.
Multiple requests for an interview with Education Management Corp. went unanswered. The company's website is now down and last month it filed for bankruptcy.
"There is no current representative of the debtors available to comment," said Jay Jaffe, one of the company's bankruptcy lawyers.
Borrowers are stuck waiting
Joyce is now arguing to the Department of Education that it should stop collecting on his federal loans because the school he borrowed them for misled him and engaged in other misconduct. So are some 165,000 other former students, mainly from for-profit schools across the country.
However, these borrowers find themselves in limbo as the Trump administration postpones an Obama-era regulation aimed at canceling the debt of those with troubled degrees. Read more
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