On Friday a Missouri jury awarded $13 million in punitive damages to a single mother who had been deceived by for-profit Vatterott College. Vatterott, which has a long record of abusing students and leaving them deep in debt, is owned by TA Associates, a private equity firm financially tied to Mitt Romney’s own private equity
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The main trade association of for-profit colleges, APSCU, seems to exist for the purpose of protecting the worst, most abusive, most predatory conduct by its member companies. Why else would the association, once again last week, attack the U.S. Department of Education for seeking to implement a law that simply requires career colleges that receive
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The U.S. Department of Education is now engaged in a series of public hearings on higher education issues, including reforms to curb the abuses of predatory for-profit colleges. It is also accepting written comments from the public.  I attended the opening hearing last week in Washington, DC, and I tweeted (May 21) about the powerful presentations
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Corinthian Colleges announced today that Leon Panetta, until recently the U.S. Secretary of Defense, and Marc Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League, have joined the for-profit college company’s board of directors. In a field marked by ripoffs of students and taxpayers, Corinthian, which operates under the school names Everest, Heald, and Wyotech, has
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The owners of America’s big for-profit colleges have developed a big bag of tricks to keep tens of billions of federal dollars flowing their way, regardless of the bad consequences for students and taxpayers.  Every time we think we’ve seen it all, a new brazen tactic emerges. Here’s the latest: The nation’s second largest for-profit
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In the past two years, as the public has come to recognize that many for-profit colleges have been ripping off taxpayers and ruining students’ lives, enrollments have declined, and the once-mighty industry has gone into a tailspin. A number of schools, such as American Career Institute and ATI have abruptly shut down many or all of their campuses,
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Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) yesterday paraphrased a well-known quote about the Holocaust to describe the Obama Administration’s regulation of for-profit colleges. Foxx, who has staunchly defended the for-profit college industry despite its blatant record of abusing students and ripping off taxpayers, apparently didn’t mention in her remarks that she is one of Congress’s biggest recipients
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