Christine Gold was living in Washington state in 2001. Her husband has a disability he had gotten through his work, so she decided to seek a higher paying job by getting a certification to become a court stenographer in order to support the two of them better.
Gold enrolled in the Court Reporting Institute, a Seattle-based for-profit college that told her that she would get her stenographer’s certificate in about two and a half years and be able to get a job paying her at least $50,000 a year shortly after graduating.
“I was looking for a career path to support my family, my husband and myself,” Gold said. “I wanted to get a skill, so I got connected with the Court Reporting Institute there in Seattle, with a lot of hopes for the future.”
After three and a half years at the school and tens of thousands of dollars in student loans she says the school encouraged her to take out, Gold realized that she was not going to be able to pass the certification exam and could not afford to keep studying.
She dropped out in 2005 without the degree she had hoped for.
In 2006, the CRI closed down after negative press, student complaints and regulatory issues from the states’ Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board had highlighted fraudulent practices by the for- profit school.
In the years since, the Washington State Attorney General’s office has fought with the remnants of the school trying to recoup losses for students who had been defrauded by the university.
In the time since leaving the school, Gold had continued to work as a secretary, up to her current position working in Northern Arizona Healthcare’s Imaging office in Cottonwood. She deferred payments she could not afford on her student loans, only increasing the amount she owed until it went past $70,000.
“Not only did I not have a skill, I had no way of going back to school for something else,” Gold said. “It was devastating times. Because you’re left with a huge debt, you can’t do anything with your life. It’s a double whammy.”
Gold stayed in touch with other students from the school, many of whom were in similar predicaments and seeking ways of dealing with the debt the school left them with. In May 2016, Gold filed a claim with the U.S. Department of Education under Borrower Defense to Repayment, a program through the DOE aimed at helping students defrauded by schools such as CRI.
By November 2018, Gold still had not gotten help from the department, so she teamed up with the National Student Legal Defense Network and sued the federal government in the case of Gold v. DeVos.
“I wish I could say that her story was unique,” NSLDN attorney Robyn Bitner said. “We’ve talked to students who have gone through similar things and been told equally bad lies by their schools. When you do student loan debt work, there are many students like this out there.”
According to Bitner, Gold stood out less for the details of her case than for the response of the DOE, which had gone longer than normal without addressing her claim. Bitner said that ever since Betsy DeVos took over as secretary of education in January 2017, the department has backed off of aggressive treatment of fraudulent schools, and has left students like Gold seeking repayment in the lurch.
“This administration has shown they don’t care about the students’ experiences and they’re on the side of the for-profit colleges at every turn,” Bitner said.
The Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment.
This summer, Gold and the NSLDN settled their case with the U.S. Department of Education.
After mediation with U.S. Department of Justice lawyers assigned to the case, the government agreed to pay off 95% of Gold’s outstanding student loan balance, totaling $62,397.47.
“We were elated,” Gold said of the results. “It means I can plan for the future. I’m 62 years old, and my husband and I would like to retire. Up until recently, until this was forgiven, we didn’t think we’d be able to retire. So now it’s opened up a whole new world for us that we can do that. We can actually sit down and go, ‘wow, we’re not going to have this huge debt, so what can we do outside of that?’”
But as happy as Gold is about the results of the settlement, she sees the whole ordeal as part of a much bigger problem with how society and the government treat students defrauded by bad schools.
“I really believe that people don’t understand what’s going on with these these predatory schools and the damage they do,” Gold said. “I appreciate our Department of Education. I appreciate that they’re trying to protect the taxpayer, and their money.
“On the other hand, don’t ignore the people that really really need their help.”
