How a For-Profit College Preyed on the Homeless
Source: Time
The second-largest chain of for-profit colleges in the U.S. has already gone bankrupt, closing more than 100 campuses last year amid federal and state investigations, but newly released emails are alleged to show the depths to which Corinthian Colleges was willing to go to prey on vulnerable people.
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Propublica sifted through thousands of pages of documents, including emails, filed as part of an ongoing lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of California against Corinthian Colleges, to uncover emails and testimony allegedly detailing the company’s questionable recruiting practices. Internal documents and testimony lay out Corinthian’s strategy for recruiting people living on the margins of society.
One witness testified that she was homeless and unemployed when a Corinthian recruiter enrolled her in classes, with the promise of future job prospects. She was allowed to live in a tent on campus while enrolled at the school. Eventually she realized the instruction she was receiving was never going to lead to a job and dropped out with $15,000 in debt.
Another testimonial describes recruiters targeting a young single mother, just out of foster care herself, who was promised special help with her learning disabilities. After just a few days in the program she dropped out with $6,000 in debt, ruining her credit, making her ineligible for housing assistance and possibly forcing her into homelessness.
According to the documents Propublica uncovered, recruiters were told to target students with “low self-esteem, few base hits”; “stuck, unable to see and plan well for future”; “few people in their lives who care about them”; and “isolated.” The alleged emails also contain evidence that Corinthian employees knowingly advertised programs that didn’t exist, lied about job placement statistics, hid the connection between the school and a lender it push students to use, and employed aggressive debt collection tactics.
http://time.com/money/4264670/corinthian-colleges-recruitment-strategy-emails/
Read more: http://time.com/money/4264670/corinthian-colleges-recruitment-strategy-emails/
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PinkTiger
(2,590 posts)I briefly worked at Phoenix and was shocked at how they instructed us to teach students and evaluate them. It was not real. It was just a way to make money for them.
mnhtnbb
(31,384 posts)Board of Governors of the UNC system served on the parent company board for Phoenix.
It's very clear that Republicans are out to destroy education in NC at all levels. It appears
that part of this move involves privatizing parts of the public university system--currently they are
after the bookstores on campus--with promises from the private company that takes over to 'donate' millions
in scholarships. That's the carrot.
Spellings is going to be disaster for the UNC system. Total disaster. The woman doesn't even
hold a master's degree. She's nothing but a flunkie for Republicans. It's disgusting.
Baobab
(4,667 posts)
Nay
(12,051 posts)from Phoenix. This fellow, a native English speaker, couldn't write two sentences without gross errors in spelling, grammar and syntax. His 'degree' got him a promotion over a very dedicated employee who had excellent English, managerial, interpersonal, and personal skills.It was a travesty of justice, and it only contributes to the decline in the usefulness of college degrees if we allow colleges like this to hand out degrees to any asshole with tuition money.
burrowowl
(17,640 posts)
PersonNumber503602
(1,134 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)(July 21, 1989)
<snip>
Virtually all of Adelphi's students were poor people, frequently young minorities, seeking to acquire skills that would qualify them for such jobs as computer operator and diesel mechanic. Typical tuition in New York, said Abrams, was $7,000 a year. Virtually all Adelphi students funded their educations through a combination of federal grants and loans.
When students dropped out of Adelphi, Terranova allegedly failed to refund student loans to lender banks as required by state and federal laws. Refunding the money, Abrams said, would have considerably reduced the student's loan burden.
<snip>
The pending criminal case against Terranova could create problems for New York mayoral candidate Rudolph W. Guiliani, who until recently was the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. While in private law practice in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Guiliani represented Terranova in a criminal case in which he pleaded guilty to stealing federal job training money in New Jersey.
Then, just a few months later, in July, 1980, Guiliani wrote a letter of recommendation for Terranova, who was applying to New York authorities for a license to operate a vocational school. The letter failed to disclose that Terranova was on federal probation at the time.
http://articles.latimes.com/print/1989-07-21/news/mn-4249_1_student-loan-money
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)He perpetrated the largest student loan mill in history at the time. They would canvass outside of places like the unemployment office saying, "Why work when the government will pay you to go to school?"
Their internal slogan was "asses in classes". Teachers were unaccredited and they held typing classes with no typewriters and computer classes with no computers.
Terranova skipped the country with millions and the government is still chasing down those students to this day.
UpInArms
(51,282 posts)if you exist, why do you allow this crap to continue?
Why do these people walk freely on the streets?
Where is justice?
Mercy?
Peace?
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)
houston16revival
(953 posts)I just wonder. To the consumer the difference between for profit, public, and private
colleges is what exactly?
The former spits off profit to private shareholders, the owners. The middle option
still relies on student loans for funding to a great extent, as well as taxpayers. The latter
raises prices forever and the largesse goes into growth and endowments.
Tax free status for the letter two? I think so, but I don't really know.
It's all a giant money-sucking pipe dream for a lot of students. A degree doesn't necessarily
yield an employment edge as it once did.
redruddyred
(1,615 posts)Jitter65
(3,089 posts)Free tuition will not help this situation.
houston16revival
(953 posts)Some of my best professors were paid $15k in the 70s at a small college
They loved to teach.
Big universities sometimes the name brand teacher lectures 500 students, then
turns discussion to graduate students who do little more than scratch each others'
backs and try to date the undergrads.
I don't know where academia is headed. Everything is about a business model. Are
there any unplumbed waters for history, archaeology, physics. Some disciplines seem
approaching the cliched 'end of history'. If I were to do it over today I'd go biosciences,
or marketing, or journalism combined with something else.
UpInArms
(51,282 posts)Pinkel, who has won more games than any other Tigers football coach with a 113-66 record, will make $4.02 million per year, an increase from $3.2 million in annual guaranteed compensation that was approved by the MU Board of Curators.
With the raise, Pinkel becomes the 10th of the 14 SEC football coaches to hit the $4 million mark. According to media reports, he trails Alabama’s Nick Saban ($7.16 million), Texas A&M’s Kevin Sumlin ($5 million), LSU’s Les Miles ($4.37 million) and Mississippi’s Hugh Freeze ($4.3 million). Pinkel is close to South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier, who made $4.016 million in 2014 and ahead of Georgia’s Mark Richt, Arkansas’ Bret Bielema and Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen, who recently received raises to $4 million.
Only 11 football coaches nationally made $4 million in 2014, according to USA Today.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/sports/college/sec/university-of-missouri/article19421208.html#storylink=cpy
Baobab
(4,667 posts)Globalizing services and their "disciplines on domestic regulation" are being put in place irreversibly in more and more countries - basically allowing all of the worlds staffing corporations and their skilled workers to compete with one another directly on wages.
So its likely that soon, colleges will soon be able to afford three PhDs for what they pay one now.
If low wages are the developing world's competitive advantage, they are being given a legal entitlement to take advantage of that competitive advantage to win government procurement contracts in all member countries.
All service sectors are tested by means of this two part test.
"For the purposes of this Agreement…
(b) 'services' includes any service in any sector except services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority;
(c) 'a service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority' means any service which is supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers."
------
Since education is supplied in competition with one or more service suppliers it does not pass the test of whether it is a public service, so it has to be progressively liberalised (liberalisation = disinvestment = privatization, progressive means unstoppable forward motion towards disinvestment and deregulation made irreversible)
Bill Clinton signed the WTO GATS in 1994, and its promise has barely even begun because the three rounds, especially the Doha negotiations kept getting hung up on market access issues, again and again. Now with FAstTrack and its first priority being finishing GATS the president has the authority to put those jobs on the table.
Baobab
(4,667 posts)But that degree needs to be more than a two or four year one.
Engineering disciplines often only require an MS.
Some in demand areas of engineering offer the best chances of being able to attain financial stability via a technical career with just a six year college education.
An MS in an in demand engineering discipline from a good school often will lead to a solid career applying that knowledge.
But start early and stay out of debt because *services liberalisation may undercut a lot of US wages soon*.
If a US person has a lot of debt they wont be able to lower their wages and they will not be able to compete with rapidly increasing low wage globalization.
Negotiations to wrap up deals first started in the 1990s are almost finished.
The developing world has been preparing in various ways to help us with our many skilled labor shortages.
Coventina
(27,115 posts)