ITT Technical Institutes to "cease operations" after federal sanctions, 8K employees to lose jobs

ITT Technical Institutes will "cease operations" after federal sanctions. The school says 8,000 employees will lose their jobs.

"I'm feeling pretty disappointed," student Robert Delgado said.

Delgado had to see it for himself, but once he arrived at the shuttered ITT campus in southwest Houston, reality began to sink in. He's a veteran who has already paid for the coming semester through the GI bill.

"They had no problem signing me up, they take my money, then I get an email saying the school is closed, what am I supposed to do?" said Delgado.

All ITT campuses closed Tuesday nationwide, including those in the Houston-area. Students, some with only one semester left to complete their degree, are trying to transfer to new schools.

As he makes phone calls to other schools, ITT student Wasi Syed now believes his education will take longer to complete.

"I have 81 credits and they're saying only 45 will transfer," Syed said.

While ITT said some staff would be available to advise students, those students we talked to are having trouble accessing their transcripts, and finding anyone to talk to about the next step.

That was the experience of student Sid Quintero.

"Nobody answers, and their webpage, the server drops," he said.

Lone Star College announced that its college advisors will be available to assist ITT students. Those advisors will be available at 9am Wednesday to answer questions. If you need assistance, contact Lone Star's advisors at ITThelp@lonestar.edu or (281)362-7827.

The Department of Education has left open the possibility of discharging student loans, but is urging students to explore all of their educational options to see what makes sense.

Helpful links:

Information about ITT concerning federal aid

How can you find a new school? The Department of Education says it might help to use this scorecard

The school issued a statement that said, in part:

"It is with profound regret that we must report that ITT Educational Services, Inc. will discontinue academic operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes permanently after approximately 50 years of continuous service. With what we believe is a complete disregard by the U.S. Department of Education for due process to the company, hundreds of thousands of current students and alumni and more than 8,000 employees will be negatively affected."

"...This action of our federal regulator to increase our surety requirement to 40 percent of our Title IV federal funding and place our schools under 'Heightened Cash Monitoring Level 2,' forced us to conclude that we can no longer continue to operate our ITT Tech campuses and provide our students with the quality education they expect and deserve. ... We believe the government's action was inappropriate and unconstitutional, however, with the ITT Technical Institutes ceasing operations, it will now likely rest on other parties to understand these reprehensible actions and to take action to attempt to prevent this from happening again."