Tag Archives: For-Profit Colleges
Trump administration moves to make it harder for defrauded students to erase debt
by Laura Meckler, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post
The package is a win for colleges, particularly for-profit ventures. It’s a defeat for consumer advocates who favor a more aggressive posture against colleges that they say routinely take advantage of veterans and older students. Read More ›
Former Corinthian College Students Sue To Have Private Loans Discharged
by Ashlee Kieler, Consumerist
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, against Turnstile Capital Management, LLC, Balboa Student Loan Trust, and University Accounting Service, LLC seeks to provide California students defrauded by the for-profit college chain with full debt relief. Read More ›
Not So Gainfully Employed
by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed
Students who enroll in certificate, associate and bachelor’s programs at for-profit colleges and universities generally see a decline in earnings (and typically greater debt) five or six years after attendance, compared to their earnings before enrollment, according to a study released Monday. Read More ›
Corinthian Colleges Students Unlikely To See $1.2 Billion Judgment
by Roxana Kopetman and Mark Muckenfuss, Orange County Register
Experts said recovery of the judgment is unlikely. And some students and their advocates said they haven’t yet gotten what they really need: release from school-loan debts. In California, 13,000 students were attending Corinthian schools when the doors shut. … The bankrupt Corinthian closed its for-profit schools last year amid accusations that the chain falsified grades, attendance and job-placement rates. Students complained of deceitful practices that often targeted low-income students by promising a lot but offering very little. Read More ›
Appeals Court Shuts Down For-Profit College Industry’s Effort To Avoid Accountability
by Chris Morran, Consumerist
“It would be strange for Congress to loan out money to train students for jobs that were insufficiently remunerative to permit the students to repay their loans,” concluded the appeals panel. “And it would be a perverse system that, by design, wasted taxpayer money in order to impose crippling, credit-destroying debt on lower-income students and graduates.” Read More ›
Who’s Regulating For-Profit Schools? Execs From For-Profit Colleges
by Annie Waldman, ProPublica
We looked at all [Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools] commissioners since 2010 and found that two-thirds of them have worked as executives at for-profit schools while sitting on the council. A third of the commissioners came from schools that have been facing consumer-protection lawsuits, investigations by state attorneys general, or federal financial monitoring. … Consider Beth Wilson. Wilson, the executive vice president of Corinthian Colleges, joined ACICS in 2014, less than three months after the California attorney general had filed a lawsuit against Corinthian for … Read More ›
Supreme Court Rejects Class-Action Suit Against DirecTV
by Robert Barnes, Washington Post
“These decisions have predictably resulted in the deprivation of consumers’ rights to seek redress for losses, and turning the coin, they have insulated powerful economic interests from liability for violations of consumer protection laws,” wrote [dissenting Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. … “It has become routine, in a large part due to this court’s decisions, for powerful economic enterprises to write into their form contracts with consumers and employees no class-action arbitration clauses … further degrading the rights of consumers and further insulating already powerful economic entities.” Read More ›
85,000 Additional Corinthian Students To Get Fast-Track Debt Relief
by Chris Kirkham, Los Angeles Times
There was enough evidence to conclude that Everest’s California and online campuses, along with California WyoTech schools, had deceived students by overstating job placement numbers. … [The California Attorney General’s Office] alleged in a lawsuit filed in 2013 that Corinthian had overstated job placement rates by counting graduates who were employed at temporary staffing agencies or one-day health fairs. In some cases, according to the complaint, Corinthian had paid staffing agencies to hire students in order to satisfy accrediting entities. Read More ›
Beware The Fine Print: Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking The Deck Of Justice
by Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Robert Gebeloff, The New York Times
The move to block class actions was engineered by a Wall Street-led coalition of credit card companies and retailers, according to interviews with coalition members and court records. Strategizing from law offices on Park Avenue and in Washington, members of the group came up with a plan to insulate themselves from the costly lawsuits. Their work culminated in two Supreme Court rulings, in 2011 and 2013, that enshrined the use of class-action bans in contracts. The decisions … upended decades of jurisprudence. Read More ›
More Trouble For ITT Education Services: Agency Restricts For-Profit’s Use Of Federal Student Aid
by Ashlee Kieler, Consumerist
The new restrictions from the Dept. of Education are just the latest regulatory and legal issue for ITT Educational Services. Last month, the company revealed that the Department of Justice was looking into whether the company defrauded the federal government. … Back in May, the SEC filed fraud charges against current and former executives with the company for their part in concealing problems with company-run student loan programs. … The company has faced actions from several states, including the suspension of GI Bill Eligibility in the state of California in May of this year. Read More ›
For-Profit Colleges Accused Of Fraud Still Receive U.S. Funds
by Patricia Cohen, The New York Times
For-profit schools enroll about 12 percent of the nation’s college students, yet they account for nearly half of student loan defaults. … Kaplan [Career Institute’s] schools, including its online California law school, where only one in five students graduates, received $776.3 million worth of federal student loans and grants last year. Because it lacks bar association accreditation, most graduates outside California are not allowed to take a bar exam. Read More ›
For-Profit Colleges Lead The Way On Loan Defaults: Report
by Ashlee Kieler, Consumerist
The current student loan debt crisis is largely concentrated among nontraditional borrowers who attended for-profit schools and other non-selective institutions. … For-profit college students represent a relatively small fraction of consumers seeking higher education – just 11% – but they represent about 44% of all federal student loan defaults. The authors say these rates lead them to believe it’s ultimately the quality of education at these schools that drive students to default, as they aren’t prepared to find employment that would allow them to pay their loans. Read More ›
It May Be A Long Time Before Many Corinthian Students Get Debt Relief
by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, The Washington Post
[A U.S. Education Department] team is reviewing claims where the “facts and law are clear,” such as the ones from students who attended Corinthian’s Heald Colleges in California, Hawaii and Oregon. Those schools were at the heart of a $30 million fine the Education Department levied against Corinthian in April for lying about job placement rates to students. Read More ›