Did You Attend UMGC?

You May Be Eligible for Full Student Loan Forgiveness.

Did you know that over 1.2 million students have already received full student loan forgiveness through the federal government’s BDR program?

The Great Terrapin Rip Off: UMGC’s Misplaced Ambitions

What Is Borrower Defense?

According to US News and World Report, “The borrower defense to loan repayment (BDR) forgiveness rule is a federal regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) that allows federal direct student loan borrowers who were defrauded by a college, university or career school to seek forgiveness of those loans.”

Since the BDR rule was established in 1994, a student was required to have or state a cause of action. In 2015, the rule changed so that students were required only to show substantial misrepresentation, such as conversations with admissions officers. Further changes have recently ensued: A self-reporting process was established in 2018. Again, the USDOE is expected to further relax standards to allow for more loan forgiveness.

Since 2017, six schools have been approved for BDR claims. The pace of targeted BDR loan forgiveness exploded in the past year with 800,000 claims approved at a cost of least $7.4 billion. During this period, at least 69 public or private nonprofit colleges have closed or announced plans to close since 2016 – though none of these students have been approved for repayment.

Presently the USDOE advises students to apply whose schools have “misled you or engaged in other misconduct” or broke a state law. Qualifying borrowers must complete a 30-minute application. You can find more information and instructions at the US Department of Education’s website: https://studentaid.gov/borrower-defense/

Have you felt misled by University of Maryland Global Campus [UMGC]? Your tuition could be reimbursed!

Take this 60 second survey to find out if you qualify.

Borrower Defense to Repayment (BDR) Survey

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Get the Facts About UMGC

How the University of Maryland’s Global Campus Got the Idea for Global Domination

If you live in Washington, DC, it is hard to miss the  TV commercials from Southern New Hampshire University. SNHU’s excessive advertising is not new and it is well-documented by our report, “Unfair Application of the ‘LeBlanc Method.’” That paper explained how SNHU, as directed by its President, became America’s fastest growing university, from 8,000 to almost 140,000 students in the past two decades, spending over $139 million in marketing by 2018.

SNHU’s student expansion leads the industry. As the consulting firm McKinsey & Company wrote in July 2022, “the market for online education has consolidated around a handful of dominant online-degree players…. while the overall market for degree programs decreased approximately 3 percent from 2019 to 2020, four of the largest open-access online education providers grew their total enrollment by 11 percent on average” – led by SNHU. In order to accommodate its booming enrollment, the school boasted of opening a “new Southwest Operations Center right here in the heart of Tucson [Arizona],” 2,700 miles from its Manchester campus.

The University of Maryland – home of the Terrapins – took notice of SNHU’s success and was determined to replicate it. Accordingly, they rechristened their online school as the University of Maryland Global Campus in 2019 (UMGC) and the following year hired a Southern New Hampshire University official to lead the effort. To further up its ante, UMGC pledged to spend a whopping  half a billion dollars on advertising over six years to compete with SNHU and others.

$85k Per New Student = Bad Taxpayer Investment

Within a few years after commencing operations, it became apparent that UMGC officials made a terrible investment – especially for Maryland’s taxpayers.

While most of UMGC’s budget comes from tuition, the Maryland state government contributes $41-$44 million annually, and recently got a boost of another $32.7 million from COVID stimulus funds in FY2022, courtesy of Uncle Sam, aka U.S. taxpayers.

At the same time, UMGC’s enrollment declined by 4% (about 2000 students), partly due to expected churn, but also because “many U.S. Army students were unable to register for courses as a result of a technical problem with the registration portal…” For its part, UMGC attributed decreased enrollment to a saturated local market as a justification to promote its offering nationally.

So what about the massive escalation of marketing expenses in 2019? In short: It was a fiscal disaster. As noted above, the Board of Regents authorized UMGC to spend $500 million on advertising over six years, with $89 million via a fund balance and the remaining $411 million “coming from the expected tuition and fee revenue associated with increased enrollment.” UMGC picked Philadelphia to test its gold-plated advertising strategy, spending $18 million to bring in an additional 212 students. As the UMD Smith School of Business teaches, this amounts to new customer acquisition cost of $85,000 per student. Consequently, UMGC’s 2023 operational budget proposal concluded that: “after these lackluster results, the university reduced national spending and reviewed alternatives to meet enrollment growth goals.”

Discrimination Against UMGC Students? What They Can Do If Unsatisfied.

According to US News and World Report, “The borrower defense to loan repayment (BDR) forgiveness rule is a federal regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Education that allows federal direct student loan borrowers who were defrauded by a college, university or career school to seek forgiveness of those loans.”

When the BDR rule was established in 1994, a student was required to have or state a cause of action. In 2015, the rule changed so that students were required only to show substantial misrepresentation on the part of the institution to which they matriculated. Recently the Biden Administration has effectively instituted “backdoor free college” by further relaxing the rule to allow any student who claims to have been misled about the quality of education provided by their academic institution to submit a BDR claim for complete loan forgiveness.

However, statistics demonstrate that President Biden discriminates by informing only some students about loan forgiveness while leaving other students – such as those at UMGC – in the dark. We know this because when CASE conducted a survey in late 2021 of students from the five public and private colleges with the most online students, we found that 97% were unfamiliar with BDR, but 82% felt misled and 97% wanted to learn more about BDR.

Since 2017, only six schools – all career colleges disfavored by the Biden Administration – have been approved for BDR claims. The pace of targeted loan forgiveness exploded in the past year with 800,000 individual claims approved with a cost to taxpayers of at least $7.4 billion – even though over 500,000 students never requested reimbursement.

Meanwhile, during this same period, at least 69 public or private nonprofit colleges have closed or announced plans to close since 2016 – though it appears that very few of these students have been reimbursed. So why is the Department of Education only targeting a select few institutions, in effect picking winners and losers among colleges?

Department leaders have admitted in recent court that a single BDR application has been denied this year – proving the BDR program is wasteful and mismanaged. CASE encourages ALL students to know their rights and, if your college has “misled you or engaged in other misconduct,” then file a claim immediately at the US Department of Education’s. website: https://studentaid.gov/borrower-defense/

How the University of Maryland’s Global Campus Got the Idea for Global Domination

If you live in Washington, DC, it is hard to miss the  TV commercials from Southern New Hampshire University. SNHU’s excessive advertising is not new and it is well-documented by our report, “Unfair Application of the ‘LeBlanc Method.’” That paper explained how SNHU, as directed by its President, became America’s fastest growing university, from 8,000 to almost 140,000 students in the past two decades, spending over $139 million in marketing by 2018.

SNHU’s student expansion leads the industry. As the consulting firm McKinsey & Company wrote in July 2022, “the market for online education has consolidated around a handful of dominant online-degree players…. while the overall market for degree programs decreased approximately 3 percent from 2019 to 2020, four of the largest open-access online education providers grew their total enrollment by 11 percent on average” – led by SNHU. In order to accommodate its booming enrollment, the school boasted of opening a “new Southwest Operations Center right here in the heart of Tucson [Arizona],” 2,700 miles from its Manchester campus.

The University of Maryland – home of the Terrapins – took notice of SNHU’s success and was determined to replicate it. Accordingly, they rechristened their online school as the University of Maryland Global Campus in 2019 (UMGC) and the following year hired a Southern New Hampshire University official to lead the effort. To further up its ante, UMGC pledged to spend a whopping  half a billion dollars on advertising over six years to compete with SNHU and others.

$85k Per New Student = Bad Taxpayer Investment

Within a few years after commencing operations, it became apparent that UMGC officials made a terrible investment – especially for Maryland’s taxpayers.

While most of UMGC’s budget comes from tuition, the Maryland state government contributes $41-$44 million annually, and recently got a boost of another $32.7 million from COVID stimulus funds in FY2022, courtesy of Uncle Sam, aka U.S. taxpayers.

At the same time, UMGC’s enrollment declined by 4% (about 2000 students), partly due to expected churn, but also because “many U.S. Army students were unable to register for courses as a result of a technical problem with the registration portal…” For its part, UMGC attributed decreased enrollment to a saturated local market as a justification to promote its offering nationally.

So what about the massive escalation of marketing expenses in 2019? In short: It was a fiscal disaster.

As noted above, the Board of Regents authorized UMGC to spend $500 million on advertising over six years, with $89 million via a fund balance and the remaining $411 million “coming from the expected tuition and fee revenue associated with increased enrollment.” UMGC picked Philadelphia to test its gold-plated advertising strategy, spending $18 million to bring in an additional 212 students. As the UMD Smith School of Business teaches, this amounts to new customer acquisition cost of $85,000 per student. Consequently, UMGC’s 2023 operational budget proposal concluded that: “after these lackluster results, the university reduced national spending and reviewed alternatives to meet enrollment growth goals.”

Discrimination Against UMGC Students? What They Can Do If Unsatisfied.

According to US News and World Report, “The borrower defense to loan repayment (BDR) forgiveness rule is a federal regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Education that allows federal direct student loan borrowers who were defrauded by a college, university or career school to seek forgiveness of those loans.”

When the BDR rule was established in 1994, a student was required to have or state a cause of action. In 2015, the rule changed so that students were required only to show substantial misrepresentation on the part of the institution to which they matriculated. Recently the Biden Administration has effectively instituted “backdoor free college” by further relaxing the rule to allow any student who claims to have been misled about the quality of education provided by their academic institution to submit a BDR claim for complete loan forgiveness.

However, statistics demonstrate that President Biden discriminates by informing only some students about loan forgiveness while leaving other students – such as those at UMGC – in the dark. We know this because when CASE conducted a survey in late 2021 of students from the five public and private colleges with the most online students, we found that 97% were unfamiliar with BDR, but 82% felt misled and 97% wanted to learn more about BDR.

Since 2017, only six schools – all career colleges disfavored by the Biden Administration – have been approved for BDR claims. The pace of targeted loan forgiveness exploded in the past year with 800,000 individual claims approved with a cost to taxpayers of at least $7.4 billion – even though over 500,000 students never requested reimbursement.

Meanwhile, during this same period, at least 69 public or private nonprofit colleges have closed or announced plans to close since 2016 – though it appears that very few of these students have been reimbursed. So why is the Department of Education only targeting a select few institutions, in effect picking winners and losers among colleges?

Department leaders have admitted in recent court that a single BDR application has been denied this year – proving the BDR program is wasteful and mismanaged. CASE encourages ALL students to know their rights and, if your college has “misled you or engaged in other misconduct,” then file a claim immediately at the US Department of Education’s. website: https://studentaid.gov/borrower-defense/

CASE Sends List of More Than 100 Students for Inclusion in Student Loan Settlement Agreement

Consumers for a Strong Economy (CASE) has issued letter to the federal judge reviewing the preliminary approval of a $6 billion student loan settlement calling for additional students to be included. The letter asks that all students who file a BDR claim to be treated equally, not just students at select institutions, and provides a list of more than 100 students seeking fair treatment by the U. S. Department of Education.

The settlement applies to the borrower defense to loan repayment (BDR) forgiveness rule, a federal regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) that allows federal direct student loan borrowers who were defrauded by a college, university or career school to seek forgiveness of those loans…

Do you believe your school has misled you?

In the last year, more than 800,000 students have been fully reimbursed for their tuition.

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All content, including text, graphics, images and information, on this Website is for informational purposes only and is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional or legal advice of any kind. CASE does not make any representations or warranties about your eligibility for student loan forgiveness nor does it make any representation or warranties with regard to the outcome of any application you make for loan forgiveness through the federal government’s BDR program.

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