I went to ITT.  Back before it was cool to say that you went to ITT.  I have a DTR that is open, so I am obviously limited in what I can share personally – in other words, I am not going to share my own letter to ED. I will, however, share how I got most of the content of the letter, and a good deal of the research that went into it, in the event the information is helpful to other folks.  I am not sharing everything, I simply cant.

The beginning of the story, is the hard part.  Do I start with the beginning of my story, or with the history of ITT, itself, that is the part that’s pertinent to all of us today?

The Wikipedia page for ITT is kind of confusing, unless you really look.  In the 1980s, ITT was a very large company – that ITT is referred to as old ITT on Wikipedia, and that’s a good way to think about it.   Starting in about 1995, ITT (old ITT) began divesting the for-profit school portion of its business, and by 1999, that divesture seems to have been completed.

Let me say, from the get go, I’m not interested in exact dates as far as some of that stuff goes.  There were changes made that are important to note though:

For instance, the SEC filings for ITT change as the company undergoes changes – that is to say that the for-profit school business that operated under old ITT was a very small portion of a big company, and the SEC filings reflect that.  Conversely, SEC filings for ITT Educational services, reflect the fact that it was a business that pretended to be a school, and that that was it’s only money-making gig.

When I talk about my own case, and why I felt it was necessary to dig a little deeper for proof of my claims, it’s important to understand the structural and corporate changes at ITT.  It isn’t enough to just say something happened, I wanted to prove it.

And sure, at the end of the day, there isn’t any hidden blockbuster event here.  I just want my student loan forgiveness, after all.  You would think it would be easy.

Think again.