This week’s guest, Alicia Davis, has spent over a decade living with the consequences of for-profit education. In 2008, after spending two years at a for-profit university that mishandled her financial aid, she found that her credits did not transfer and she was left to start her college education all over again. Working with the Debt Collective and the Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Lending, she was granted approval of Borrower’s Defense, but only released from 10% of her debt! Everything changed again in March 2021, when the Biden Administration reversed a Trump policy that will now discharge the debt of 72,000 defrauded borrowers, including Alicia.

While Alicia waits for the official document that will close the financial, emotional, and professional hardship she endured, the damage is certainly done. Listen to her experience advocating for herself and completing the educational journey that led her to a fulfilling career today.

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Transcript –

Nikki Nolan: I’m Nikki Nolan and this is Matter of Life and Debt a show about people in the United States and their student debt.

Today’s episode The Fight for Borrower’s Defense.

I talk with Alice Davis a member of The Debt Collective’s Biden Jubilee 100.

She has been fighting for 15 years to have her fraudulent student debt from a for-profit university discharged.

With her Borrower’s Defense now approved is part of the 72,000 defrauded borrowers who will have $1 billion in student loans canceled.

This is her story.

Welcome to the podcast. It’s so good to have you here.
So we’re going to get into this. How much student debt do you have right now?

Alicia Davis: Total. I have about $109,000 in student debt.

Nikki Nolan: Wow. Is that private? Is it federal? What is sort of the makeup of your debt?

Alicia Davis: Well, they’re all federal loans. However, a majority of them that belong to the for-profit sector side of my story are FFEL loans which are actually commercially held loans. So they’re guaranteed by the government, but serviced by a bank.

And then the remaining loans, probably about $75,000, are actually Direct Loans with the government.

Nikki Nolan: Oh, okay. Do you know what your interest rate is on your loans?

Alicia Davis: For the FFEL loans, those are at 6.8%. And I believe that the Direct Loans are around that amount as well.

Nikki Nolan: It’s interesting to see the differences between people’s interest rates. It’s been the most eye-opening for me. How, how big it varies.

So what has sort of been the impact of student debt on your life?

Alicia Davis: Ooh. It, it has been a huge impact. It’s actually not allowed me to pursue certain career goals, where I wanted to go and get jobs with federal agencies. I couldn’t due to student loan debt, defaulted student loan debt to be specific. And then additionally, you know, when you get jobs, they run your credit and everything. You have to explain yourself, why do you have such a high debt to income ratio? Why is this on your report?

So you have to write letters to the big bosses who you haven’t even started working for yet. And you’re explaining why you’re in debt and why you need the job so you can pay the debt.

I’ve also, I can’t buy a house, my debt-income ratio is too high. I can’t finance a car. I can’t, I can’t even get my very low credit card debt to refinance to a lower rate because my debt-income ratio is too high.

So it’s impacted me, pretty bad in terms of my financial aspects on my credit is ruined because of the student loans.

And so that determines whether they Jack up the interest rates on your credit cards and everything, and you’re considered high risk.

So, it’s, it’s not just. Career-wise, it’s not just financial, but it weighs on you. It gets your mental health and gets the physical health that stresses you out.

If you have an emergency, you can’t get any funds to help with that emergency. You have to budget correctly, you know, save, which is, it’s not a bad thing to save, but it’s stressful. It’s, it’s done a lot to my life.

And thankfully my husband has been very supportive and understanding of my debt crisis, and I’m financially dependent on him, in order to be able to make large purchases. So…

Nikki Nolan: Yeah. It’s a lot. And your, your story. I, I found your story through the Debt Collective. You’re a part of the Debt Collective Biden in 100, Jubliee, which is people who are on strike from their student debt. Tell me a little bit about that.

Alicia Davis: I’ve been with Debt Collective, since 2016, but I’ve been really active in their recent strikes, especially the Biden 100. And I’ve pretty much gone on strike, in terms of, fraudulent student loans that were taken out of my name in a term related to a for-profit college, but also all the debt that occurred from that bad behavior that I ended up having to take on just in order to finish my career goals.

And just in order to survive, you know, go to college, get the job, supposedly the job that’s supposed to pay well, and it’s taken me a very long time to find that job.

So, I’ve gone on strike, and for me, since I’ve already defaulted with the FFEL loans for the for-profit side, I just I’ve been fighting them for so long.

I was just, you’re not getting any of my money. And then on top of that, I promote and I encourage, and I like to educate people about what Debt Collective’s goal actually is. A lot of people think debt striking means that, Oh, you’re not going to pay your loans.

No debt striking is different for everybody. And it’s individual to their case. For some people, it may be a zero repayment with their income base. But understanding that interest still collects and that the balance is gonna up, or they may be involved because their parent co-signed nine or is on their kid’s loans or their grandma’s co-sign for them.

So it, it just, it’s just an overall. So bringing the thought and the idea of that. This debt, burdens us all. It’s not specific. And it took me a long time to understand and not feel guilty about how much debt I actually had. And that’s what Debt Collective’s goal is to bring the idea. And like your show is to bring the idea of debt and talk about it and make it known that this is a problem, and it’s not just specifically individual people. It’s common it’s all of us are experiencing this.

Because of my borrower defense claim, which is, the argument that I was defrauded by a for-profit college when someone submits a bar defense claim, your debts, your debt is actually in forbearance, your direct government loan debt, but my loans were FFEL loans, so they don’t qualify it.

When I started this whole borrower defense and I was still in school when my borrower defense was going into play.

I’m not paying for this fraudulent loan. You’re not getting one penny out of me because this loan is not valid. and so when my Borrower Defense claims started going into the process and pending, it was pending for six years.

So my Direct Loans have been in forbearance. They’ve been, due to the Borrower Defense, which is part of the borrower defense law. I did not have to make payments. The interest is still been growing. And you know, when they gave me my approval, the interest, the government took that interest off the five years of interest off, which knocked the balance back down.

But the FFEL loans are still, they don’t qualify for CARES or anything like that.

So Debt Collective connected me with the Harvard Law School and predatory lending, to allow me to go ahead and be, a class action plaintiff for the lawsuit for them. So, when I was getting threatened with wage garnishment notices for the for-profit defraud loans, Debt Collective was giving me help on how to argue that request my hearings in front of a judge and, you know, give me that kind of resource and that support.

Nikki Nolan: Awesome. I feel like this is a good point to tell your story.

Alicia Davis: So growing up on the East coast where the space shuttle went off, I’m from Merritt Island in Rockledge, Florida. I wanted to be an astronaut because NASA was there. And back in the eighties, growing up in the eighties and nineties, like that was the thing that you wanted to be was NASA and astronauts.

But as you, as you progress through school, I realized I sucked at math. I suck at math and I was bad at writing in English. And then eventually I discovered music and I played classical bass. For about 20 years and I wanted to do, I wanted to be a music teacher. And I went to college, you know, briefly for three, like three months and started studying music.

And all I wanted to do was play music, but in order to be a music teacher, they teach you, they want you to do music theory and history of music and learn other instruments. And then I realized I was terrible at all of that. So, I hated music theory. I thought it was silly. I was like, I just want to play music.

And then I ended up getting a job as a bartender and I tend to bar, in downtown Orlando, at a popular nightclub for a very long time. And by the time I reached about 24, I was like, okay, I think I’m ready to go back to school. And I was starting to get interested in crime scene investigation.

I wanted to do crime scene investigation, and I wanted to work at local law enforcement. Agency doing that. So that’s what started piquing my interest. When you get to that age, you’re like, oh, those things are interesting to me. So that’s when I started exploring the next step in my life, because I wanted to find a job that had good pay had benefits, had a vacation, had sick, had holidays.

When you work in hospitality, you don’t get very many of those, you know, you’re working every holiday, you’re working till four in the morning, depending on the place you work out will depend on whether they give you benefits or not. So it just got tiring and I’m like, I’m ready to set myself up, you know, to make sure I have a good career. So that’s when I started exploring the next step for me, which is getting into school and getting a job as a crime scene investigator.

From there it kind of gets messy and it’s turned into a nightmare, since making that decision.

Nikki Nolan: Tell me about the nightmare…

Alicia Davis: So in 2006, remind you, this is before the iPhone came out. So nobody had a smartphone in their hand, Googling everything and Google reviews. Weren’t very popular and Yelp wasn’t popular. And the idea of for-profit colleges wasn’t widely known, especially with people who weren’t very familiar with universities and colleges like myself. I’m living on my own. I’m still classified as a dependent under my parents’ taxes or my mother’s taxes, but I don’t know anything about financial aid or how to enroll in school or anything like that.

I lived in Orlando at the time and I started exploring colleges. In the area that offers crime scene investigation degrees.

I don’t know what kind of degree you needed for crime scene investigation. But I know that that’s the route that I wanted to go. And I came across a college called Florida Metropolitan University. So when you read the title, you see Florida – Metropolitan – University, Hey, it’s a university that sounds legit.

It sounds like a college, even, even the website had .edu. So as a normal Joe, normal person, you’re like, Oh, okay, start reading through the programs that they offer. And when you start looking at colleges, you reach out to those colleges and speak to people. I also was curious about Valencia community college as well, the University of Central Florida, but they didn’t offer the flexibility of online classes as Florida Metropolitan did.

So I contacted Florida Metropolitan. I learned about their online classes and I was assigned a counselor. That’s what we’ll call her. But like I’ve said before, she was a salesperson and she was a hustler. And her job was to hustle people that contacted her to enroll them into their school. And so, from there it was everything that you want to know about school she sold that lie. And I still remember her name to this day. Cause that’s how much embarrassment I had about letting this woman get me to sign up for a complete lie, but it happened.

She had signed me up, she told me that in order to get a crime scene investigation job, I would need to get their criminal justice bachelor’s degree within their school. And that this degree would lead me to a lucrative career in law enforcement, that they had internships and opportunities with local law enforcement agencies in Florida, that I would also have the help, that I would need in order to secure a job as a crime scene investigator.

And then additionally, she told me the salary was around $40K at the time, which is 2006, was pretty decent, especially for a recent grad. And then, told me that once I signed up, if I wanted to go and pursue any other degrees, all my credits would transfer.

She never really explained how much money the program would cost me, but she did elaborate and say, “Oh, well, we have a lot of scholarships for individuals like yourself. We have a lot of grants that you’ll be able to secure for this school. And, when you’re done with your bachelor’s degree, you’re going to be pretty much ready to get into the workforce as a crime scene investigator.”

So you’re like, “Oh, okay. That’s, that’s exactly what I want to do. That’s the direction I need to make this happen.” So I signed the paperwork and it was very high sales, high pressure, high, everything that you could do in terms of being coerced into signing. It happened, they did the whole, “If you don’t sign up now, you’re going to miss your opportunity to sign. I’m gonna mail you this paperwork right now, and then you gotta mail it back and you need to sign up or you’re not going to be able to get scholarships.”

Oh, okay. I don’t want to miss my opportunity. And, all that, all that was part of the for-profit tactics. It’s like pain funneling, it’s using your emotions and preying on people to get them to sign up for the program.

And it worked. And, I signed up for the program in 2006. Went from 2006 to 2008 for two years. During that time I was paying out of pocket. I was, I guess, giving them all my Pell grant money, because, in order to even start school, it doesn’t matter which school you go to, you have to fill out a financial aid package through the department of education, through the FSA website.

And when you’re doing that, people don’t understand that when you’re filling out your financial aid packet, thinking that you’re filling it out to see how much federal financial aid that you will receive from the government, you’re also signing a contract or a master promissory note, for the government to allow the schools to take out loans in your name. Without really actually telling you how much money those loans are going to be. And a lot of people don’t understand that that’s where your master promissory note comes from and that you are actually agreeing to allow the school to take out as much money they need in your name to cover your balance.

So for-profit schools knew this and they look at that kind of stuff, they see how much financial aid you’re going to get. They see if you’re a veteran, you’re automatically a golden GI bill recipient. They’re going to take your grant, your GI bill, you know, if you’re disabled or whatever, they’re going to take that money as well. And that’s kind of why they preyed on people who were poverty level, veterans, women, as well as minorities, because they’re in that to get more financial aid, and then they’re able to take out loans on the back end.

So they don’t tell you that when you sign up for financial aid. And they don’t tell you that in college, in general, that’s part of like the dark secret of signing up for school. And it’s sad because you’re literally signing your life away. But the funny thing about for-profit colleges is when you’re enrolling you also sign an enrollment agreement. And in that enrollment agreement, you signed an arbitration clause, which pretty much is an agreement saying that you will not be able to sue the for-profit college if anything were to happen. And a lot of people don’t understand those kinds of legal contracts. And I didn’t really understand it until I started working in consumer law, in my law enforcement career when I started it, and I learned about consumer protection laws. I learned about legal contracts, what should be clear and conspicuous and what isn’t.

Throughout my years of learning about this, I’m like, “Ooh, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s highly illegal.” So what was happening was for-profit school FMU didn’t tell me how much money my program was going to be overall. I trusted them that my Pell grants, my financial aid, my scholarships will cover all that.

And then when I went from 2006 to 2008, they made me pay out of pocket. And they’re like, “if you don’t pay out of pocket, your remaining balance, you’re going to get kicked out.” Well, I don’t want to do that. You know, I want to stay in school. So I paid them $200 a month on top of like I said, they were getting my Pell Grant money. They took all of that. And then they were also additionally taking out loans in the backend without my knowledge or properly notifying me on that. And fast forward to 2008, the school during that time became Everest University. So it went from Florida Metropolitan, which was still a Corinthian school, and changed names to Everest University, which was part of the Corinthian family. So by that time, by 2008 rolled around, I woke up one morning. It was January of 2008 and I went to log into class and I just, I never could log in.

And I never figured out why I could never log in. The school kind of just ghosted me and dropped me from the program. I had no idea why. I hadn’t been failing. I hadn’t been missing any classes. I was fighting with them about getting an ID badge to be able to get on campus, to use their computers but other than that, you know, they just kinda just ghosted me like a bad date. I never saw them again. Never heard from them again. Never got an email, anything.

So that never sat right with me. It was always like, “what, what just happened? That doesn’t make any sense.” But now it gets really, really bad. Apparently, they had a $1,700 bill they forced me to pay. They sent it to a debt collector and in order to receive my transcripts, I had to pay this $1,700. After they kicked me out, they’re holding my transcripts hostage, like, okay… So I had to pay $1,700. And that debt collector, he, he was illegal too. He did a whole bunch of shady stuff, but I paid it like a good that’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s a debt, I’ll pay it. No problem. And I was like, “I need to get back into school. I have two years down. I’ve only got two years to go to get my bachelor’s degree and getting it in criminal justice. I’m going to be a crime scene investigator. I’m ready.”

And I march run down to Valencia Community College in Orlando. And it’s the start of the new semester so the line was extremely long. I think I waited in line for four hours to talk to somebody. I talked to them and I was like, “Hey, I’m ready to join the school. I have, I’ve been at Florida Metropolitan for two years. I have these credits. I need to transfer, what can I do to get those credits transferred?”

And they (Valencia) were like, “Yeah, no, we don’t, we don’t take any credits from that school at all.” And I’m like, “What?”. “No, we don’t, we don’t take any credits from that school. Nothing is accepted from, from that school.”

And I was like, well, that’s so crocked. Like, how is that even possible? It’s a college, it’s the same class. Math is math. Astronomy is astronomy. English is English. So, I had to go through the whole process. And when I got enrolled in Valencia, I had to start from scratch. And, I had not a single credit transferred, for two years of FMU. Not a math class, not an English class, not any of my criminal justice class, nothing, nothing transferred at all. So I literally started from scratch, but now I had no Pell Grant money, or financial help so I had to start over and continue on my way.

Yeah. So that never sat right with me. I’m like, how can you go to school for two years and not a single credit can transfer that does not sound legit to me. So I filed a complaint with the BBB, the Better Business Bureau. They’re, they’re part of the government and this is like, this doesn’t sit well with me. And I filed a complaint and they, FMU, actually responded. Their response was that it was my fault for not taking the right classes and that they do have classes and credits that are transferable to other schools, but I just didn’t make the right ones.

And I’m like, what, how does that make sense?

And here’s the thing about for-profit colleges is that you don’t sign up for your classes, your counselor signs you up. And she sends you the books and everything. They pretty much tell you what you take for the next semester.

And their semesters are like every eight weeks. So it’s like, you don’t get to choose what you were taking. You’re just kind of on a schedule, that the school picks it for you. So that, that statement didn’t, didn’t sit well with me.

And I filed a complaint with the Florida Department of Education. I sent them some pretty nasty emails, like. How is this even possible? And, they didn’t care. They’re like we just pawn your answer off on somebody else and never got anywhere with that either.

So in 2008, when I went to enroll and I was like, I want to be a crime scene investigator at Valencia. They’re like, yeah, “you need a forensic science degree.” And I’m like, what? You needed a forensic science degree. Like I would have to take a whole slew of extra math classes, extra science classes, chemistry, organic chemistry stuff that I just wasn’t prepared to take. So I stuck with the criminal justice degree, and I ended up getting my bachelor’s.

I went from Valencia Community College to the University of Central Florida. During that time, I got my bachelor’s in criminal justice, as well as quite a few certifications and crime scene investigation. Just quick classes, nothing that would land me a full-time job, but just helpful. And my criminal justice degree as well as Crime and Intel analysis and police leadership.

So extra classes to help with working my way up in the leadership aspect in a law enforcement community. And then from there, I graduated in 2013 with my bachelor’s and I actually had a minor in anthropology so I was learning about the culture and why do people do things that people do and their behavior on why they do those things with a lot of mortuary stuff, which was pretty interesting.

So that was still the crime scene part of me, but I was falling into the realm of crime analysis and Intel analysis. And then in 2012, my last year at UCF, I landed, an amazing non-paid internship, with a fusion center here in Orlando. And I worked for free for over a year. But learning the job and that’s what you need in order to, to get the job. And that’s what led me into getting the job and it worked out, it was a great experience. It was great networking. And I was able to make my career from there.

And thankfully I had the support system of my husband to allow me to be able to do that. And then I still had those nasty loans piling up in the back end.

So from the start over in 2008 at the community college, I went and finished my master’s degree. I have a master’s in criminal justice and it costs me an additional $75,000 to finish that entire span. Thankfully they were deferred cause I was still enrolled in school. But during that time from that period, I also had fraudulent loans that were building steam in the back end and still collecting interest and everything like that.

So I made it, I, I finished my career goal. I didn’t get a job in crime scene investigation. But that’s okay. I did meet a lot of crime scene investigators and their schedule is very, very daunting. So I’m glad I didn’t get that job because it was a little bit, a little bit too hefty for me. By the time I got out of school, I’m an older person now. I don’t want to be staying up till four in the morning or getting called up at like six in the morning.

So I made it, I finished school. But at what price did it cost me? And I’m still fighting those student loans with the fake fraudulent school. It’s been 15 years.

During my process of learning about law enforcement, learning about evidence gathering, learning about how court cases are proven. I started looking at consumer law protection, like I said, I worked for the Attorney General’s office, in the consumer protection department. It was like my first job out of college. So it was like your, your intermediate job, like your first job. I did a lot of reading working with attorneys on how contracts need to be clear and conspicuous and how businesses are sued for misrepresenting themselves. And I’m like, “Ooh, yeah, this is definitely FMU, totally FMU.”

And there’s a lot of complaints about how online Everest and FMU. And so I just started collecting news articles, evidence, information. I went and saw numerous attorneys in the area and I’m like, “well, can I sue Corinthian for this? Can I sue somebody for this? Can I talk to somebody about this? Like, I shouldn’t have to pay these loans. I don’t have anything to show for this. Like absolutely zero.”

All the lawyers were like, “Yeah, we’re not going to help you. Good luck to yourself. We don’t want anything to do with this, cause this is not only time-consuming and money-consuming, once you open it, but it’s also never going to stop. It’s a rabbit hole.”

So I didn’t get anywhere with that. I did get contacted by a law firm that started investigating these schools, but that never turned out to be anything. I read about several other students from Everest that were suing and lost in court. So that, that was like, Ugh, that’s not good because they had the same issue. They had no credit transfer. They weren’t able to transfer to any other college classes. They wanted to go to law school and then they didn’t have any credit and wouldn’t accept it in law school. So they experienced the same thing that I did.

And then I started reading about Debt Collective. It’s now 2015 and Debt Collective has launched their campaign and pretty much the Corinthian 15 came out. And that, that was the moment when I was like, “Oh, like, I’m not crazy. What I experienced is real and what I saw and what I felt and how I was hustled actually happened because these 15 individuals were saying the same thing that I had experienced and what I’ve been saying and what I’ve been trying to get somebody to talk to me about.” And so I started following the suit and they started talking about Borrower Defense and I’m like, Oh, well let me investigate Borrower Defense.

And so I filed in 2015 and I never got a response back from the department. I saved the application because I’m smart. Now I control print and save everything. So it’s a date, time, and stamped. It proved that I did it. So I filed and I never heard back. And I started following Debt Collective and I reached out to them and I was like, Hey, this is happening to me too. How can I join?

By now, my FFEL, the fraudulent loans are going into default. And because I told them I was like, I’m not paying you. I got into this big hissy fit match with the department of education. I literally wrote all these letters. I was writing to James Farrah in California. I guess he was like some sort of department of education guy, a higher up. And I write him a letter. And he wrote back and was saying that the reason why I am held liable for these loans is that I, quote-unquote “benefited from the school in terms of getting the education.”

Even though I had no credits to transfer, I still learned something from them so I was responsible for the loans and, his story, his statements, everything that he was saying was all incorrect. He was trying to say that the reason why I’ve benefited was that I used loans to pay for that education. And I was like, no guy, your story is all mixed up. Did you even read my letter? Like I paid out of pocket and everything for this, like I paid probably close to $40,000 overall for two years of school and I have nothing to show for it.

Finally, he just started sending my letters back. I was like, I am invoking my Borrower Defense. I was like, take me to court, bring it on, you know? And I’m, I’m sending these certified letters to these people and just like writing them. And I’m like, take me to court, take me to court ‘cause you know, I’m ready.

So my loan is going to default. I’m starting to get wage garnishment letters. And now they’re starting to report as well, as default on my credit. So I’m not able to apply for any federal agency jobs now, because if you have defaulted student loans, they won’t even look at you. So any FBI jobs, CIA jobs that I wanted to do for Intel analysis are never going to happen. And I was like, yeah. Okay, well that sucks.

From there, they started sending me wage garnishment notices and I was like, okay. So I started telling Debt Collective. I was working with Thomas specifically. And, they were helping me construct my letters to write back to the Department of Education, telling them that, okay, if you’re gonna garnish my wages then I’m entitled to a hearing in court, I want a hearing.

And I want an in-person hearing with the judge. And, I was looking forward to that in-person hearing, and the department wouldn’t give it to me. They denied me my in-person hearing. They didn’t want to give me a phone hearing. They didn’t want anything to do with the hearing because they knew that I would tear them up in court. If I just had that moment to a judge about garnishing my wages on the loans.

And so that kind of fell on the wayside. And I ended up having to file another Borrower Defense in 2016. And then from there, my Borrower Defense was pending until 2020. So from that time, my direct loans were in forbearance because that’s part of the borrower defense law. And then my FFEL loans have been reporting default for the last six years. And so yeah, it, it ruined my credit. And it’s not just one loan. They would take out multiple loans. So it’s actually seven loans total, that is reporting in default. Yeah. So it looked really bad. It still looks bad on my credit.

And I’m just like to the point where I’m like, I just don’t care anymore. It is what it is.

So working, getting jobs, as I said before, they run your credit, working in law enforcement. They want to make sure that you’re a responsible individual and paying your debt is part of being responsible. So they run my credit and be like, girl, you’re, you’re a hot mess. And I’m like, Whoa, wait, let me explain. And so I tell them, I have to write a letter to the sheriff and explain to them, I promise that it’s defaulted fraudulent loans that I’m fighting. And I’m not going to have the gumption to steal evidence or money to pay off my debts because I’m a bad person. Like they just want to make sure that you’re not going to be a problem or irresponsible because of your debt. And it didn’t actually deter me from being able to score the law enforcement job in Intel and crime analysis, but it added that extra unnecessary stress and step that I had to do in order to obtain that job.

So I have been working with Debt Collective, from my Borrower Defense, never got my wage garnishment hearing. A couple of years passed by and Debt Collective passed my name off to Harvard law school. And, Harvard law school, they’re suing for Borrower Defense because the government isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

And so Harvard reached out to me and they’re like, “Hey, we see that you have a Borrower Defense claim. And we want to know if you’d like to be one of, I think it’s seven plaintiffs, for a class action lawsuit?” And I was like, “hell yeah, let’s do this!” So I’ve been super excited to be able to represent victims of for-profit colleges.

And when we filed the claim, it was almost 200,000 people were waiting for the Borrower Defense to be processed. And they’d been waiting just as long as I have since 2015, 2016. And it’s kinda in limbo, they’re, they’re stressed out, they’re financially ruined like I am, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re like, what’s going on with this? How can this be?

In 2019, they went ahead and filed the Sweet Vs. DeVos, which is now Sweet Vs. Cardona. And I, myself, along with other plaintiffs along with Theresa Sweet, which she’s fabulous by the way. I love that girl and she is a victim of a for-profit college. She went to, I think it was AI, Art Institute. When it comes to for-profit schools, Corinthian and ITT are the two that have been taken down and, and pretty much closed. And they’re gone, they’re done for, but AI students, which the evidence is so overwhelming it’s so disgusting, and as well as the University of Phoenix students, it’s there, but none of them have actually been able to get their borrower defense claim approved. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the government wasn’t processing those applications. And I think the Devry was another one that was taken down as well in terms of being caught being bad, doing bad things and bad behavior, pretty much-ripping people off. But, yeah, so Theresa, she’s the lead plaintiff and she’s been very active in California and her story is pretty impressive as well. She’s worked very hard on that side and representing AI students and victims of for-profit colleges. And, I had no idea that was going on with AI at all.

And I’ve learned a lot.

I’ve learned a lot. I’ve met a lot of people. I’ve learned a lot about, you know, understanding and talking to people, being in this same situation as me and they’re stressed out and they don’t know what to do. And I’m like, Hey, let’s talk about it. So that’s why I like to promote and give updates to people online in a lot of my student loan groups just like, “Hey, this is what’s going on. We’re working on it. Debt Collective is working on it. Harvard’s working on it. Just be patient. It’s through the courts and the courts, unfortunately, take a really long time.” So, from there, we sued them and 250,000 plaintiffs in a class-action suit.

Right now we’re in DeVos, and we’ve come into DeVos. She pretty much put a hold on it because she thinks that it’s quote-unquote, “free money for individuals”. Even though the evidence is there. And the loans that she had to actually release because of a judge saying you have to release these defrauded students, she writes, “with extreme displeasure” and pretty much nasty about it. And that’s sad, honestly.

The department should be working for the people and should have protected the people. But it didn’t. And, after I watched Fail State, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that documentary, Fail State? You definitely need to watch it. And it’s, I think it’s Dan Rathers that produces it and it’s a little long, but it really opens your eye about how dirty the student loan system, student debt system is and how for-profit colleges, and colleges in general, exploited that system. And, and it focused more on for-profit colleges and individuals like myself that have been victimized by it, but I was just like, it just made me feel more empowered. I’m like, okay, I’m going to do this.

So, the lawsuit went on. The department was supposed to be processing these applications, in a proper way with due process and they didn’t. They weren’t doing that and all and a lot of the people are starting to get mass denials with the same wording. But, for me, I didn’t get a denial, in March 2020, I think I said January last time, but it’s actually March, I actually got an approval.

So the department approved my Borrower Defense application. They said, “Hey yeah, you, you get an approval. Yeah, we totally agree you’re a victim. You’ve been defrauded. You’ve supplied enough evidence to prove that you’ve been defrauded but you still have to pay 90% of this loan. We’re only going to give you a 10% reduce reduction.”

So on my loans, that would have been $1,900. So I still owed whatever the amount was at that time, close to like $32,000, I would still have to pay the $32,000. And accept the fact that, yes, the government said, “Hey, you’re a victim, but you still got to pay.” And I was like, “Oh, okay. This is terrible.”

So I cried. I cried a lot and I cried to Harvard and they felt really bad. They were like, I’m so sorry. Right now, we don’t have anything because this is still so new. The department was like, “Oh yeah, you can go ahead and you can reapply, or you can rebut our decision.” When I’m like, okay, well, how can I rebut? I never really got to that point. Cause I was like, I’m going to wait because this isn’t over yet.

Right after that happened, Harvard called me and was like, Hey, since you got approval, but you got a percentage amount based on a math equation that makes absolutely no sense to any regular mathematician or person that looks at this and goes “What, how, how does this even work?” And that you shouldn’t be entitled to just the percentage. It’s either all or nothing. It’s either, yes, you’re defrauded and you wipe everything out, or no, you’re not defrauded. And then we can figure out what to do recourse-wise.

So I joined. I’m one of the plaintiffs and Pratt Vs. DeVos. now Pratt Vs Cardona.

And, it was pretty much individuals like myself that have received approval but got a percentage rate. And I’ve been seeing that a lot of Corinthian and ITT students are getting those approvals. And it’s not just in the original timeframe. When Obama started the Borrower Defense they’re only looking at years, attended from 2010 to 2014, but now they’ve expanded that. I went in 2006. I’ve seen people in 2009, and past 2014. They’re all people that are getting those approvals but still have to pay the debt, which makes no sense. So we sued a second time and that case is still pending. And since then, we’ve switched administrations.

So, since March 18, it was my birthday, I read this announcement on the news and I’m like, “what, what is this saying right now?” And it’s saying the Department of Education is resending the percentage amount and that if you had received approval on your Borrower Defense, you will get a full discharge of that debt.

And I was like, I wrote my lawyer and I was like, what is this really like, are you kidding me right now? Is this really happening? And it had just been released. So not a lot of details were out, but yes, supposedly in theory, since I have approval, I am now going to be getting a full discharge of that debt from the for-profit college. So I’m excited about that and I cried a lot and I was like, thank you universe. Thank you.

And I’m still waiting for the letter. And, because like I said, because of Debt Collective and their Corinthian 15, I’m a product of Debt Collective. And because the Debt Collective fighting for me and allowing me the opportunities to be able to do this, I am now I can say I am one of those 72,000 students that will have their fraudulent debt discharged.

So I’m excited about that actually happening because that means they have to take it off all my credit reports, all that has to go bye-bye. So I no longer will have any negative reflections on my credit for that. It’ll be like, it didn’t happen, well, other than the last 15 years of my life and the stress and yeah…Everything it’d be like, it never existed, because I have nothing to show for it.

And when I started gathering my evidence for Borrower Defense, I was able to track down documents before Corinthian disappeared into the wind. And, I got five documents from, from my two years there. They only had five things on my file. And one of them was the actual enrollment agreement. And when I got the enrollment agreement, I saw that the college had altered the agreement after I’d signed it and wrote in the amount of the classes and how many credit hours it was going to take me.

Nikki Nolan: Wow

Alicia Davis: And so they changed, they changed the agreement, after I’d signed it and I had no idea. They wanted 192 credit hours for a bachelor’s degree when it’s really, for a regular school is 160 credit hours. So like, it’s like it makes no sense, but, so I am, I’m excited about that. But unfortunately, there’s a lot of other people that are not there yet. And we’re working on that, working with Debt Collective to make that happen next, for them. But unfortunately, the department, if you saw the documents that were released on March 19th, the discovery documents you’ll see that the department actually did not have a system for rebuttals. They did not have a system for people who reapplied. They also had documents saying that they were rewarding people for doing denials. If you met your denial quota of like five denials a day, you get a paid day off or a bonus or something like that.

Nikki Nolan: So we’re coming to the end, what advice would you give your younger self, knowing what you know now?

Alicia Davis: Honestly, I would say, read your contracts, read your information. Like, I don’t think college is a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s very beneficial for individuals to go to college, to get not only the experience and the education, but the networking. If it wasn’t for me going to college, I wouldn’t be. Where I am today, working in a career that I actually love. Not a lot of people can say that they love their career. And you know, the individual, the lady that hired me for my internship, and it’s been eight years since I’ve been there, she just retired last month.

And I took the time out to write her a letter to tell her, “Hey, I wanted to thank you for giving me this opportunity, because without you letting me explore this opportunity, I wouldn’t be here right now. So, you know, I took the time out to let her know. Thank you for believing in the broke college student who didn’t know what she wanted to be, but allowing me to be able to do this.”

And so, I would just say, you know, just make sure you understand, but go to school. It is, it is amazing and you can explore and you learn your network, and you learn how to critically think and become your own person. And you never know, like, what opportunities you may think you’re going to be working in crime scene investigation, but then next thing you know, you’re doing, you know, you started your own business and you’re doing a podcast online, you know, you’ve got a YouTube channel.

You never know what could happen. You never know who you’re going to meet. So, I mean, I would just say, read the contract and make sure you understand it.

Nikki Nolan: Is there anything that you want to promote or pitch.

Alicia Davis: Yeah. So I encourage people to get actively involved in the student loan debt crisis and understand that we, as a community, as, as a country, are experiencing this and there are so many groups out there now that are waking up, and that is starting to fight for student loan debt and understanding that we pretty much are slaves to the debt until we die. Organizations like Debt Collective, are so powerful and are getting so much movement. I just saw a new series podcast called Scared to Debt, which is produced by Allen and I don’t remember Alan’s name, but it, it, it’s going to be phenomenal. I can already tell. And it’s like, people, individuals like those like we need to start organizing. We need to de-stigmatize the embarrassment of debt, and what happens. I read so many nasty, negative comments online about you should have “pulled yourself up by the bootstraps”, “you knew what you were signing up for” and “you need to work harder.”

And I’m like, that’s that kind of stigma that just makes people embarrassed and not want to talk about it. And we can’t be like that anymore. We have to talk about it. It’s, it’s important that we talk about it because it’s not just my generation, and I’m Gen X, It’s, you know, it’s millennials, it’s the Zillennials or Gen Z and it’s the generations after that because this is 30 years, at least, this is what happens when you’ve monetized education. You know, it becomes a capitalist enterprise, and this is the downfall of that now in the last 30 years. And it sucks because education is a human, right. It benefits everybody whether you want to go to school or not you should be able to have that opportunity.

So I encourage people to get involved with the local chapters, write their senators. Even if you have senators or representatives that you think don’t care, write them anyway. That’s why you pay them. That’s why they represent you and make noise about it because otherwise, it’s never going to get fixed. The system is never going to get fixed and we can complain and moan about it all we want online, but it’s not going to actually systematically change until we work together. And de-stigmatize the feelings and guilt of the debt, you know? So I’m hoping that individuals who listen to this will query and research, DebtCollective.org or look into other groups that represent this and that want to look at Harvard’s school on predatory student loan lending, it is another one where they have all kinds of information on all the lawsuits on this.

So, yeah, just get organized. Just start getting involved, start talking about it is the first step and it blossoms from there.

Nikki Nolan: Thank you so much for being on the show. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation.

Alicia Davis: Thank you so much, Nikki.

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