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DeVry University agrees to pay $100 million penalty for misleading ads

Posted at 1:32 PM, Dec 15, 2016
and last updated 2016-12-15 15:32:11-05

Some former DeVry students will get a payday courtesy of the college.  

DeVry University and its parent company settled a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit for $100 million, according to a news release from the FTC. The FTC alleged DeVry illegally misled people in its ads by claiming that 90 percent of graduates actively seeking employment landed jobs in their field within six months of graduation. In the filing, the agency claimed the numbers are skewed because many of those jobs are outside of the students' fields.

According to the FTC:

DeVry will pay $49.4 million in cash to be distributed to qualifying students who were harmed by the deceptive ads, as well as $50.6 million in debt relief. The debt being forgiven includes the full balance owed-$30.35 million-on all private unpaid student loans that DeVry issued to undergraduates between September 2008 and September 2015, and $20.25 million in student debts for items such as tuition, books and lab fees.

The settlement also prevents DeVry from making future false claims regarding the likelihood of graduates getting a job, and the compensation its graduates received or can expect to receive.

statement on DeVry's website reads, part:

DeVry Group chose to settle this action after filing an answer denying all allegations of wrongdoing. Student services and access to federal student loans are not impacted by the settlement, and at no time has the academic quality of a DeVry University education been questioned. 

DeVry is headquartered in Illinois, but has a campus in Phoenix.