Oak Creek, Wis. — Mai McCarthy’s life is much different now. She’s been a teacher at Forest Park Middle School for four years. She has a home in Oak Creek and two children whom she adores. Life wasn’t always this simple for Mai.
"I grew up extremely poor and my parents were both drug addicts,” she said. "I lost my dad about eight years ago and my mom two years ago and also my eldest brother two years ago due to drugs.”
Mai admits she wasn’t a well-behaved child, or student. She said she joined a gang at one point and sold drugs herself. She is Hmong and it is tradition in Hmong culture to punish misbehaved children. That punishment came in the form of a forced marriage when Mai was only 15.
“It was a mentally abusive relationship,” she said. "Life was very hard for me growing up, and there was a lot of trauma.”
In high school, Mai was in an alternative program with mainly other minorities and teenage parents. It was then that she experienced the false promises of ITT-Tech, a fraudulent for-profit college.
"I was given the opportunity to get college credits in high school, thinking that I was going to start a new life and be a college woman, but it wasn’t the case,” she said. “I went through another trauma having to deal with ITT-Tech.”
Mai remembers recruiters setting up tables filled with brochures at her high school, strategically so the kids in her alternative program could see it. The alternative program was for students who were falling behind, who acted out, who were young parents and minorities.
“They would talk about how all these credits would transfer to a four-year college and they’d say you can get a job right out of college,” she said. “As an inner-city student, a young mother and someone really struggling, they took advantage of me and didn’t support any sort of success for my future.”
Like other people who were taken advantage of, none of Mai’s ITT-Tech credits transferred to other legitimate schools. She had to start over. She attended MATC and eventually UW- Parkside to earn her teaching degree. The arduous journey and difficult experiences Mai has overcome have made her into a better educator, she said.
“I’ve always wanted to be that safe space for my students,” she said. "I’m not gaining anything from my students except their success.”
Mai only attended ITT-Tech for one year. Her ex-husband forced her to drop out to care for the children and because he believed women should not attend college. He was also Hmong. Despite her pain at the time, she said she’s thankful now to have only gone there for a year. Still, she accrued $15,000 in student loans.
Working a minimum wage job, she paid off her debt. Then, ITT-Tech came back years later, trying to charge her another $5,000 in loans for a year she never attended. She worked with a lawyer to take care of it.
“I’m surprised I even caught that,” she said. “I feel still very unsure that it is done because what if five years from now they call again and say here’s another five thousand dollars that you owe?”
The only thing she can do now is move forward. She hopes sharing her story inspire others with similar experiences to come forward, knowing they’re not alone.
“I hope this helps other people and if they hear my story, they’ll feel like they can share their stories as well,” she said.
Mai is thankful that all of her loans from ITT-Tech were eventually forgiven. The school filed for bankruptcy and closed in 2016.