Brooks Institute Borrowers Investigation

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This white paper documents predatory lending and the defrauding of thousands of students who attended Brooks Institute of Photography, in Santa Barbara, California, between 1999 and 2016. It combines extensive data and testimony from nearly 500 former students at Brooks, dozens of lawsuits against Brooks and its parent company, Career Education Corporation (CEC), and media investigations of both Brooks and CEC.

As students and former employees report, recruiters routinely relied on deception to enroll students and persuade them to take out both federal and private loans. The practices alleged and documented here included the following:

• Lying about graduation rates, job placement rates, and potential salaries on graduation
• Lying about available grants, scholarships, and financial aid
• Enrolling students regardless of their qualifications and ability
• Failing to properly inform students about loan options available and the differences between federal and private student loans
• Misleading students about the actual costs of education at Brooks
• Misleading students about accreditation and the transferability of credits

After graduation, many Brooks students found it completely impossible to afford student loan payments on their actual salaries. In our sample, average debt was over $143,000 and some had balances in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

They describe here the catastrophic effects that their debt has had, not only on their own lives but also on their loved ones, including co-signers, parents, spouses, and children. Many lives have been simply ruined by the predatory lending at Brooks.

Brooks borrowers have sought various remedies, including through individual and class-action lawsuits against Sallie Mae, Brooks, and CEC, but these have brought very limited and inconsistent relief. The Department of Education’s Borrowers Defense to Repayment program has not worked thus far.

We hold the Department of Education accountable for its negligence, for enabling the for-profit education industry as a whole and CEC in particular. It has been too often corrupted and even staffed by industry insiders. We demand a swift and meaningful remedy for the harms that we continue to suffer as a result of the fraud and predatory lending clearly documented here.

We are asking for the Department to do the right thing by providing a group-wide discharge that cancels all of the outstanding federal student loans for every single student who attended Brooks Institute and refunds for payments made on these fraudulent debts, removal of all loans from credit reporting and return of Pell and GI benefits by the end of 2024.

July 12, 2024

U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW
Washington, DC, 20202

Re: Brooks Institute

Dear Secretary Cardona,

We commend the Department and the Biden Administration for canceling loans borrowers took out to attend Corinthian College, ITT Tech, and the Art Institute. We are grateful that the Administration has taken action to cancel additional federal student loans. However, we are deeply concerned that the Department presently has evidence in its possession that demonstrates other schools engaged in misconduct and yet those borrowers’ loans are still outstanding. We ask that the Department promptly implement broad cancellation for Brooks Institute borrowers, a closed school for which the Department has a robust record of misconduct.

Brooks Institute [of Photography], once owned by Perdoceo Education Corporation (formerly Career Education Corporation, CEC) and accredited by ACICS, was a for-profit school that enrolled 22,000 students over 17 years with a staggering default rate on both federal and private loans. Although hundreds of borrowers will see relief through the Sweet settlement, thousands more are stuck in the borrower defense pipeline or unaware of their rights to borrower defense discharge and have not applied for relief.

The Brooks White Paper: A Borrower’s Investigation details the specifics of the predatory nature of the school, including 4,600+ pages of evidence they have collected against Brooks and CEC by the borrowers themselves. The evidence comes from lawsuits and settlements, congressional testimony, and federal investigations.

Borrowers have continuously had to deal with the lifelong repercussions from a school that:   

• Lied about graduation rates, job placement rates, and potential salaries on graduation;
• Lied about available grants, scholarships, and financial aid;
• Enrolling students regardless of their qualifications and ability;
• Failing to properly inform students about loan options available and the differences between federal and private student loans;
• Misleading students about the actual costs of education at Brooks;
• Misleading students about accreditation and the transferability of credits

It is clear: Brooks Institute was a fraudulent school. 

 The Undersigned XX organizations, XX Borrowers, and X Brooks Faculty/Administrators request that the Department of Education do the right thing and cancel this life-crushing debt for tens of thousands of borrowers who attended Brooks Institute by the end of the year. 

These borrowers have already waited far too long for the relief they deserve under federal law, and it is crucial that the Department moves quickly, lest thousands of Brooks borrowers remain saddled by these loans for the rest of their lives. 

Given the possible administration change, it’s crucial that the Department moves quickly, lest thousands of Brooks borrowers remain saddled by these loans for the rest of their lives.

Sincerely,

Ashley Pizzuti
Brooks Borrower
Debt Collective organizer