Yet another bad rap for "For-Profit Schools."

A Washington Post follow up article to the GAO report seems to fill in the some details involving the unnamed schools; the usual suspects are listed along with some others:

washingtonpost.com

 

Here is the video
U.S. GAO - For-Profit Colleges: Undercover Testing Finds Colleges Encouraged Fraud and Engaged in Deceptive and Questionable Marketing Practices

 

All I can say is WOW! These people are forceful.

 

I watched about half of the video and it made me sick. How about the moron saying he owes something like $75K to UF and will probably never pay it. I think people have to take on some responibility to learn what a program cost or is worth but this is just plain wrong!

 

It is annoying how patronizing the last admissions director was. It's not that the student isn't ready to take the next step. Any reasonable person should do a cost-benefit analysis and at least an informal NPV calculation. I bet they teach these concepts in their business classes, but they certainly don't want their students using them to avoid the rip-off that is a for-profit degree in most cases.

 

That last admissions person in the video totally blew me away - WTF?

I mean, how much is this going to cost...

What I don't understand is why the secrecy with the schools - if the feds have the evidence, then why not come out and name the schools where this behavior occurred?

Shawn

 

CNN has a story about the report. It names the University of Phoenix, they also claim that one way to punish these schools is to take away their accreditation. If that would ever happen it would definitely deal a heavy blow to the for-profit model of higher education. And it will certainly further corrode the already bad image that the for-profits currently have, specially UOP.

 

sorry I forgot the CNN link, here it is.

Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

 

ok boys and girls, maybe I've missed the bus, but after quickly glancing over the links and watching the video, I still can't determine all the schools involved. Can someone just post a list of the schools involved if they know who they are?

 

According to the Washington Post link in Post #21 above:

Interesting to note that Kaplan is owned by the Post. It also appears that all four of the schools named in the first paragraph have sponsored links here at degreeinfo.com. So they definitely know how to market themselves.

 

On July 30, the Federal government revoked the loan eligibility of Ascension College in Louisiana, an ACICS-accredited for-profit school. The school closed immediately. The administration acknowledged that most of the school's income came from Federal financial aid to its students, and that without such payments it could not operate. This is not unusual; many other for-profit schools would not exist without Federal financial aid programs either

Adding to Acension's problems, it appears that several thousand dollars' worth of tuition payments that were made prior to the school's closure were embezzled by a financial aid officer.

 

Here are the schools, according to the Washington Post:

University of Phoenix, Argosy University, Kaplan College, Everest College, Westech College in California, Bennett Career Institute and Potomac College in the District, MedVance Institute in Florida, College of Office Technology in Illinois, Anthem Institute in Pennsylvania, and Westwood College and ATI Career Training in Texas. Kaplan, Everest and Phoenix each were cited twice, for different campuses

Source:

washingtonpost.com

 

Interesting.

 

I believe that a lot of the problem has to do with the fact that they employ an outside sales force. These people are usually called "enrollment counselors" but it's pretty obvious that they are little more than informed sales people. They make their living at least partly from commission based on how many people they can get into the program. Like many commissioned sales people who's livelihood depends on it, they will go to great lengths to get you enrolled. Some might choose to use less than honest tactics. I have personally experienced this with one of the schools mentioned above.

 

I finally watched the whole thing. How the undercover person did not lose it is beyond me. I would jumped up and said, "You are a rude $&**&^$ and I got you on tape - you are going down!"

 

Everest College is right down the street from me. Goodness.

 

Just when I was ok with Penn State's price tag...thanks....I'm kidding.

 

I bet that the real economic cost of state college course/certificate/deghree/etc is many times higher than the student fees.

There was a recent post that discussed the true state college costs for California.

 

So why not take advantage of what‘s already being paid, or should we paid twice in protest? I think it has more to do with their huge profits and not the fact that they are not tax subsidized. I broke out my taxes and the tax for my Community College district is only $45 a year.

 

I do take advantage of it - tuition for me is $26 per semester unit at a CA CC.
But $12,928,000,000 from taxes will go to subsidize higher ed in California this fiscal year (or $323 for each of the 40,000,000 CA residents, few of which receive higher education).
Like you, I also pay around $40 per year in taxes for my local CC.

Re the big profits: The Apollo annual report for 2009 shows that their receipts were $4 billion, taxes paid $446 million, and net income of $600 million (yes a lot of money, but 15% net profit is in line with the companies in my stock portfolio).
http://www.apollogrp.edu/Annual-Reports/2009%20Apollo%20annual%20report.pdf