Online Search Ads Hijack Prospective Students, Former Employee Says

In March 2011, a former employee of a lead generation company complained to the FTC. He "felt bad" about deceiving students, and was going to be fired for poor performance.

In effect, some for-profits were subscribing to a service that hijacked contact information provided by students who were seeking information about public universities!

Of course, the for-profits are not directly involved, they can always feign ignorance, but it adds to the sleaze factor of the for-profits :nono:

Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education

 

It's pretty easy for anyone to confirm that such "hijacking" occurs: just click on an ad for School A, and see if you get a response from School B instead. Here's one true story:

A number of other examples are listed in the cited article.

The non-profits are doing what they can, but abuse is still common:

It wouldn't surprise me if misleading ads of this kind have been posted here at degreeinfo (although this is pure speculation).

 

i wonder if the heads of these companies realize how badly they are destroying their university's brand, and damaging the reputation of for-profit schools in general.

My bet is that they don't care. As long as they can ramp up enrollments, which in turn will pump up stock prices, they'll just keep on doing it with the hopes of cashing out on their stock options before it all comes crumbling down. It reminds me of athletes causing long term damage to their bodies with steroids so that they can get short term improvements in performance.