Former students of Globe University and the Minnesota School of Business say they feel left in the dark following a recent decision to remove the opportunity for restitution to more than 1,000 people a lower court previously said were owed money after it determined the schools had falsely marketed their criminal justice programs as pathways to become law enforcement officers.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled earlier this week that only the 15 victims who testified in court will receive restitution, as the State failed to prove those victims' experiences applied to all who enrolled in the programs. This excluded most of the nearly 1,200 others who were eligible to file a claim for restitution of tuition and other school fees and expenses.

The campuses closed at the end of January 2017 after the U.S. Department of Education dropped the schools from its federal student loan program, leaving many furious with nowhere to turn.

“It’s not fair at all and it’s wrong,” said Julie Barnett, who attended the program. “We really put everything into getting our degrees and the ability to use those degrees is not there right now, so we really feel like we wasted a lot of that money.”

Barnett is currently suffering under massive piles of debt, and she's not alone.

Wendy Brown of Elk River was a firearms instructor before she decided to go back to school at age 49 to get a certification and teach at the academy level, a career path that--despite an $80,000 degree--never quite materialized. Now, she's devastated by how this case turned out.


“A lot of people dropped this ball," she said. "Unfortunately a lot of us out there—we went back to school and you know how hard it is—you got to get good grades and work hard and we did that.”