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ITT Tech students looking for answers after school closes its doors

Posted at 6:43 PM, Sep 06, 2016
and last updated 2016-09-06 20:43:01-04

MURRAY, Utah - School won't start this fall quarter for thousands of college students nationwide after ITT Technical Institute closed its doors Tuesday.

One student stopped by the Murray campus looking for answers, only to find the doors were locked.

"I was to start next week," said Arturo Martinez in the school’s empty parking lot.

Martinez received an email from ITT Tuesday morning stating: "We have made a very difficult decision to discontinue our operations effective immediately."

"I had already graduated with an Associate’s degree in electronics engineering technology from ITT Tech," Martinez said.

Martinez finished that degree at the Oakland, Calif., campus. He recently moved to Utah and planned to start classes to earn his bachelor degree.

"I decided to come and see if it was really closed and it is," he said.

ITT Tech released the following statement:

"With what we believe is a complete disregard by the U.S. Department of Education for due process to the company, hundreds of thousands of current students and alumni and more than 8,000 employees will be negatively affected."

The Department of Education said ITT's creditor, Accrediting Counselor for Independent Colleges and Schools, ACICS, said ITT is not in compliance with criteria to stay accredited. Therefore, losing its accreditation, which means it loses federal financial aid for students.

"There was no indication no warning," Martinez said. "It came as a total surprise. I'm not sure what to do at this point."

Going forward students have a couple options: they can get their federal student loans discharged or try to transfer their credits to another school.

Many alumni Fox13 spoke with are still wondering if their ITT Tech degrees are valid.