November 12, 2014

Scam: Websites Promising Jobs And Medicaid Are Instead Bait for For-Profit College Telemarketers

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A network of U.S. marketing companies run glossy websites promising jobs, health benefits, food stamps, and heating assistance, sites with names like localemploymentnetwork.org or medicaidinsurancebenefits.com. But according to former employees of a company connected to these operations, the real purpose of these sites is a classic bait-and-switch: to get low-income people, single mothers, veterans, and unemployed older people on the
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September 3, 2014

“Back to the Future” for career colleges: What we have to do to regain credibility

Many for-profit colleges get about 90 percent of their revenue from federal financial aid. For-profit schools have 13% of U.S. students by nearly half of all student loan defaults.

In this guest post, Raul Valdes Pages addresses his colleagues in the for-profit college industry. Raul Valdes Pages was the founder and CEO of Denver Technical College, a for-profit school offering associate, bachelor and master’s programs. He also has served as CEO of Sextant Education and marketing manager and vice president at DeVry. He is
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April 3, 2014

Head of Teachers College Group Sits on Board of Predatory Corinthian Colleges

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Sharon P. Robinson, the president and chief executive officer of the non-profit American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) has served, since January 2011, on the board of directors of Corinthian Colleges, a publicly-traded corporation that runs the for-profit colleges Everest, Heald, and WyoTech. While Robinson’s organization advocates for strong professional teacher education, Corinthian has a
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March 28, 2014

Which For-Profit College Lobbyist Are You?

I’ve just published a new 100-page e-book, Stealing America’s Future: How For-Profit Colleges Scam Taxpayers and Ruin Students’ Lives. You can buy it for 99 cents on Amazon. I hope you’ll read it, because it is a critical moment for Americans to examine and speak out on the issue of for-profit colleges, the trade schools that bombard
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October 31, 2013

FTC Warns Vets That For-Profit Colleges “lie about how well their graduates fare”

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The Federal Trade Commission may be ready to get tough with America’s for-profit colleges. That makes sense. The agency’s core mission is “to prevent business practices that are anticompetitive or deceptive or unfair to consumers.”  The business model of many for-profit colleges is built on deception — if students actually had all the relevant information,
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October 15, 2013

Who Owns The Awful Corinthian Colleges? Wells Fargo, Marc Morial, Pension Funds

Kamala Harris

Last Thursday, California’s attorney general, Kamala Harris, sued Corinthian Colleges, one of the country’s biggest — and worst — for-profit college companies, for “false and predatory advertising, intentional misrepresentations to students, securities fraud and unlawful use of military seals in advertisements.” Harris’s lawsuit claims that Corinthian, which operates the schools Heald, Everest, and Wyotech, deceived prospective students, investors, and
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August 24, 2013

Obama: For-Profit College Industry “Making Out Like a Bandit”

Barack Obama

Yesterday President Obama delivered a forceful message to the predatory for-profit college industry. In response to a question at an event Friday at Binghamton University in New York state, Obama said these businesses were “making out like a bandit” preying on veterans and other students, as well as taxpayers. He warned that if these for-profit
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July 24, 2013

Leon Panetta Quits Corinthian Colleges Board; Marc Morial Should, Too

On April 30, I published an article criticizing former Obama Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and National Urban League President Marc Morial for joining the board of Corinthian Colleges, one of the most irresponsible and predatory for-profit college businesses. (The Los Angeles Times ran a piece addressing this matter on May 31.) Corinthian, which operates under the
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