Students at the CSB School of Broadcasting who took out loans from Sallie Mae to cover the $12,000 tuition bill may get some relief from their lender if they can’t finish classes.

Sallie Mae says it’s still investigating CSB’s status – the school is open for now but could shut down April 20 if a buyer for the bankrupt for-profit operation doesn’t emerge.

If CSB does shut its doors for good in the coming weeks, Sallie Mae says it would likely forgive some of the loans it has issued to CSB students.

“We have a philosophy that students should not have to pay for education that they didn’t receive,” Sallie Mae spokeswoman Amanda Holt said in an e-mail statement released yesterday.

CSB abruptly shut its doors at the beginning of March when the company’s lender seized $1 million from its bank account, CSB said in a news release.

On March 20, a federal bankruptcy court allowed CSB to keep its doors open until April 20 for current students to finish their classes and reach the required 332 hours of class and studio time to get their certificates.

But students in the night program are particularly worried they won’t reach that goal. Their classes used to meet two nights a week and now convene four nights a week, they said during a conference call with state officials last week.

Students may have difficulty getting refunds if they chose to drop out of the program, state officials said. Each campus has a $10,000 bond that would be split up among the students seeking refunds. Getting more money back would require filing claims in federal bankruptcy court. Holt suggested Sallie Mae might help students with that process.

“Upon a school closure, we try to help students get a refund from the school and contact the state to help students seek tuition recovery assistance,” Holt said in the statement. “If those two options do not pan out for students, then we provide a partial loan discharge for the portion of training not completed.”

But the prospect of having part of his loan forgiven isn’t enough for Demonze Spruiel-Rose, a student who takes night classes at the Loop campus.

“I want to be washed of it clean because I didn’t sign up for this,” he says.

While he may be able to finish the classroom and studio components by April 20, he doesn’t expect to be able to find and complete an internship by then, which is required to get the certificate.

“It’s a good possibility that the radio station I’m going to try to get an internship with, they can say, ‘Hey, the school is closed, you’re not a student anymore, bye-bye,’” Spruiel-Rose says.

CSB has about 400 students nationwide at its 26 campuses, including about 30 at its Loop campus and about 20 in suburban Downers Grove.