Lawsuit Accuses For-Profit Schools of Fraud

[Redfairen]

Source: NY Times

It was the electronic monitor around a student’s ankle that first gave Kelli J. Amaya serious doubts about the Harris School of Business.

The young man with the monitor was studying to be a pharmacy technician, and Ms. Amaya, who worked at Harris, a for-profit chain of trade schools, knew that the most widely recognized certification for pharmacy technicians excludes anyone convicted of a felony or even a low-level drug offense.

.......


"I saw students who never should have been there, students with whopping gaps in learning abilities and major psychiatric problems who were just not capable of doing the work,” said Ms. Amaya, an administrator at Harris’s Linwood campus, and then at its Wilmington, Del., campus, from 2009 to 2011. “The bosses were always like, ‘Stop asking why they’re enrolled, just get them to graduation however you can.’ ”

Her charges are part of a federal lawsuit filed by seven former employees against Harris and its parent company, Premier Education Group, which owns more than two dozen trade schools and community colleges operating under several names in 10 states. The suit contends that while charging more than $10,000 for programs lasting less than a year, school officials routinely misled students about their career prospects, and falsified records to enroll them and keep them enrolled, so that government grant and loan dollars would keep flowing.


Read more: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/us/lawsuit-accuses-for-profit-schools-of-fraud.html?referrer=

[frazzled]

1. This is why the WH has been aggressively fighting these schools since 2009

The Federal Trade Commission is getting tougher with for-profit colleges, opening a new front in the latest Obama administration-led attempt to crack down on the sector.
The independent agency functions as the federal government's primary consumer cop. Last week it released stricter guidelines on deceptive marketing practices by for-profit colleges that feature vocational programs. The commission advised colleges against misrepresentations about their accreditation status, transferability of credits, job placements, graduation rates or salaries of graduates.
The new standards followed a tip sheet the commission put out last month to help veterans and members of the military better scrutinize for-profits before enrolling.
Both releases included strong language.
“Not every school has got your back. Some for-profit schools may care more about boosting their bottom line with your VA education benefits,” Carol Kando-Pineda, a lawyer with the commission, wrote in a blog entry. “Some may even stretch the truth to persuade you to enroll, either by pressuring you to sign up for courses that don’t suit your needs or to take out loans that will be a challenge to pay off."


Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/14/federal-trade-commission-steps-scrutiny-profit-colleges#ixzz2tpstsqmZ
Inside Higher Ed

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/14/federal-trade-commission-steps-scrutiny-profit-colleges

As the Education Department gathers a panel to rewrite controversial for-profit college regulations, the motto might as well be “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The quest to regulate those colleges defined most of President Barack Obama’s first term and continues into his second — although the last attempt at a crackdown in 2011 ended with a rule later thrown out in court. The department remains determined to hold for-profits accountable for their graduates’ debt burdens and ability to repay them. And the colleges are equally committed to fighting a process they say unfairly singled them out


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/scrutiny-again-for-for-profit-colleges-96432.html#ixzz2tptoehL7

After months of political wrangling, the U.S. Department of Education finalized on Thursday its highly contentious "gainful employment" rule, a crucial element of the Obama Administration's crackdown on the rapidly growing for-profit career-college industry.

The rule will strip federal financial aid dollars from vocational programs that load students with more debt than they can realistically repay. When it goes into effect in July 2012, it will join a batch of other previously announced regulations set to begin next month, which include preventing career-college recruiters from being paid based on the number of students they enroll and placing stricter requirements on states to monitor schools.



Read more: Obama Government Rule Cracks Down on For-Profit Colleges - TIME http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2075324,00.html#ixzz2tpu8JDs3

[merrily]

10. There's been fraud in charter schools.

[joanbarnes]

2. I've seen this first hand too. This action comes many years too late.

[jsr]

3. Put these fuckers in jail.

[BodieTown]

4. Get In, Get Out, Get Ahead...

...then get real and discover you were swindled.

Maybe it's just me, but all of these for-profit "schools" strike me as guaranteed money pits.

[BrotherIvan]

5. THIS is why we need publicly funded trade schools

We are abandoning those students who are not college bound (and the college track as well). These predatory trade schools can fill the gap, promising jobs and swindling students out of enormous tuition fees. It is FRAUD.

And yet we are told we don't have enough skilled workers in this country...

[El_Johns]

6. I forget what it was, but there was a rule that was altered that allowed these types of schools to

get more federal student aid money.

Maybe they should just reset that rule back to what it used to be.

[msanthrope]

13. Got a cite??? nt

[woo me with science]

14. They promised reforms right before the last midterm elections (2010), but then

but then watered them down to nothing with/for corporate lobbyists right after the election.

Obama Administration Caved On For-Profit College Regulations, Insiders Say
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/16/obama-for-profit-college_n_877860.html[/div class="excerpt"]
How shocking that we hear more promises now that it's midterm election time again.


.

[world wide wally]

7. Of course

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. "so that government grant and loan dollars would keep flowing."

Ah yes,...otherwise known as "Asses In Classes".

[Th1onein]

9. Oh yeah, looks like they're squeaky clean

[merrily]

11. If true, it won't be the first case of fraud in for profit schools.

[Herself]

12. this has been going on for decades

It's just gained attention because of the economic downturn and many unemployed people are trying to revocate to gain employment.

A major player? CDL mills. America isn't lacking in drivers, America is lacking in people willing to drive and be forced to break the DOT laws. Companies force drivers to drive out of hours, drive tired, and drive vehicles they know they can get a ticket for even moving them.

If you don't cheat on your log book, driver out of hours how can the company retaliate?
They starve you out. They don't give you loads. You don't earn pay, you quit.
The freeze you out, or give you the worst locations to deliver to. Locations that are dangerous, or so small that you have to pay a fee for a drop and yard jockey to put the trailer at the dock for a live load. The company doesn't reimburse you.

It's rigged. The drivers bear the brunt of responsibility for trucks and deliveries but don't have the authority required.