Almost 4,500 Massachusetts students who attended the for-profit American Career Institute are set to receive $30 million in debt relief from the U.S. Department of Education.



The college, which abruptly closed in 2013, had five campuses, including one in Springfield. The other locations were in Braintree, Cambridge, Framingham and Woburn.



Joined by former ACI students, US Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Attorney General Maura Healey announced the debt relief at a press conference at Healey's office.

Healey pointed to ACI as an example that the for-profit college industry needs "heavy policing."

"When for-profit colleges build a profit model around scamming students, then students shouldn't be left holding the bag," Warren said.



Healey submitted last year the application for the Department of Education to cancel the loans taken out by the students.



"ACI was a predatory, for-profit school that admitted to breaking Massachusetts law and lying to its students," Healey said in a statement. "Today, these students are finally getting the relief they deserve."

The relief should be automatic, with ACI students receiving an email from federal officials, Healey said.

Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, said in her own statement that ACI targeted "low-income and vulnerable populations, enrolling students for the sole purpose of extracting federal student loan money."