The for-profit college chain Education Corporation of America said this week that it would shut down nearly all of its schools, leaving almost 20,000 students with partially completed degrees and credits that many other schools will not accept.

The company, based in Birmingham, Ala., operated more than 70 vocationally focused campuses nationwide before losing its accreditation on Tuesday. The chain’s programs included training for aspiring chefs, nurses and green-energy workers at schools including Brightwood College, Virginia College and the Golf Academy of America, which sold itself with the slogan “preparing students to win in the game and the business of golf.”

The shutdown was the largest failure of a for-profit chain since 2016, when ITT Technical Institutes went bankrupt, and came after the college’s accreditor — itself a troubled organization that the United States Education Department had accused of oversight failures — notified the company that it would no longer endorse its programs.

That caused potential investors to walk away from the financially struggling chain, according to a letter that Stu Reed, the company’s chief executive, sent to students on Wednesday.