Can’t find a job after paying for college? Just sue someone, it’s the American way.

Emily S. Rueb writes at The New York Times.

Suit Seeks Relief for Trade School Students With Years of Debt but No Career

The Wilfred Academy promised her “everything you’ll need for your beauty career.” When she enrolled, Ana Salazar, a single mother of four, then 40, believed it was a ticket out of her minimum wage job as a security guard.

But 26 years later, Ms. Salazar, who is retired and lives on government assistance, still doesn’t know how to cut hair. The Wilfred branch at West 50th Street and Broadway, one in a nationwide chain of beauty schools, was shuttered before she could complete the course. The only thing she has to show for her time there is a pile of repayment requests for a federally guaranteed loan that has ballooned to more than $16,000 with interest and fees.

“I feel like they’re abusing me,” Ms. Salazar said through an interpreter. “It’s unfair they’re still charging people like me for a school that is nowhere to be found.”

Ms. Salazar is one of the four named plaintiffs seeking debt relief and reimbursement from the federal government in a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday.

The suit contends that the government should stop trying to collect on loans that were given to Wilfred students, since it was aware that the company routinely falsified student eligibility for the loans.

Like many others, Ms. Salazar, who is Dominican, was enrolled even though she could not speak English, did not have a high school diploma and was not given a test that examined her ability to benefit from the course, which were requirements for her to be eligible for a federally backed loan.

The lawsuit is seeking class-action status so that other Wilfred students still paying off debts can also benefit.