Last week, I wrote about a new report out from the General Accountability Office that investigated educational practices at for-profit schools. The report is mixed, with some schools looking good, and others that appear willing to violate academic standards in order to pass and graduate students. The context for this investigation is that about a…
On November 23, the United States Government Accountability Office released a report titled “Experiences of Undercover Students Enrolled in Online Classes at Selected Colleges.” It’s a behind-the-scenes look at a few for-profit schools, and the lengths to which they will go to keep students enrolled. This week, I’m going to explain the context for the…
Last week’s state elections attracted attention for a variety of causes and elections, most notably the defeat of Ohio’s tough new collective bargaining law and the defeat of the pro-life “personhood amendment” in Mississippi. But for for-profit colleges, the most important election of the night mostly flew under the radar: Democrat Jack Conway was re-elected…
A few weeks ago, I looked at some of the methods which for-profit universities use to get “leads” on potential students. Getting contact information on a possible new student is, however, just the first step. The next steps are to get in touch with the potential student and convince them to enroll. In today’s blog…
[This post has been updated on 11/7/2011. The US Senate has said that for-profit colleges took in $626 million through the GI Bill, not $1 billion as they had initially reported] In the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of press about for-profit colleges and federal student aid. The big news is that the…
In my last post, I examined “Education Start,” a deceptive site run by a company called Vantage Media. Education Start asks students which colleges they are interested in applying to, and promises it will give them information about applying. In reality, it gives their contact information to for-profit recruiters which are paying for leads. In…
Earlier this summer, Josh Keller wrote a story for the Chronicle of Higher Education about the tricks that some for-profit schools use when advertising online. He looked at two websites in particular, collegesurfing.com and EducationStart.org, both of which promise to help prospective students “find the school that’s right for you.” In actuality, the only schools…
Yesterday, my co-blogger Ezra Deutsch-Feldman wrote about apparent abuses of management power at Sullivan University, a for-profit institution in Kentucky. Today, guest blogger Joe Berry looks for-profits from the other side, from the point of view of faculty. Joe is a labor educator and a contingent faculty activist; he has been active in both the…
Administrators at Sullivan University in Kentucky were trying to avoid an investigation, but they might regret how far they went to try to stop it – and in the process, they’ve earned themselves an additional investigation. It’s a long, complex story, but it illustrates just how far some for-profit schools will go to protect their business.
It all started this summer, when attorney general Jack Conway began a series of investigations into several for-profit schools in Kentucky (you may remember Conway from the 2010 senate race in Kentucky, where he lost to Rand Paul). One investigation for example, into Daymar College, is looking at whether the schools forced students to buy overpriced textbooks from the campus bookstore, misled students about whether their credits would transfer to other schools, and accepted students who did not meet Daymar’s minimum qualifications for admission.