Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit chain of colleges that has been under federal investigation, closed its doors and apparently is out of business. This is a shame for the 16,000 mostly low-income students who were lured to enroll and promised a good job. But it is good news to see a predatory venture go under.
These must be the remnants of the Corinthian chain, because last December, the U.S. Department of Education allowed the corporation to sell most of their campuses to a debt collection agency with no experience running colleges.
Congress and the U.S. Department of Education should have cracked down on these institutions long ago, but they hire the best lobbyists in town, from both parties and continue to offer a cheap version of “education” that makes money for them and rips off students. When Senator Tom Harkin was in charge of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, he tore into the for-profits, but to no avail.
They make so much money in their business, that they can afford to hire the lobbyists who protect them but not their students.
This is what the New York Times wrote about the industry’s ability to dodge regulatory controls:
The story of how the for-profit colleges survived the threat of a major federal crackdown offers a case study in Washington power brokering. Rattled by the administration’s tough talk, the colleges spent more than $16 million on an all-star list of prominent figures, particularly Democrats with close ties to the White House, to plot strategy, mend their battered image and plead their case.
Anita Dunn, a close friend of President Obama and his former White House communications director, worked with Kaplan University, one of the embattled school networks. Jamie Rubin, a major fund-raising bundler for the president’s re-election campaign, met with administration officials about ATI, a college network based in Dallas, in which Mr. Rubin’s private-equity firm has a stake.
A who’s who of Democratic lobbyists — including Richard A. Gephardt, the former House majority leader; John Breaux, the former Louisiana senator; and Tony Podesta, whose brother, John, ran Mr. Obama’s transition team — were hired to buttonhole officials.
And politically well-connected investors, including Donald E. Graham, chief executive of the Washington Post Company, which owns Kaplan, and John Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix and a longtime friend of the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, made impassioned appeals.
In all, industry advocates met more than two dozen times with White House and Education Department officials, including senior officials like Education Secretary Arne Duncan, records show, even as Mr. Obama has vowed to reduce the “outsize” influence of lobbyists and special interests in Washington.
As I wrote just a few weeks ago, “The burgeoning of the for-profit college industry has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, sent many thousands of students out into the world with shoddy educations, and made a few people very rich.” No one is doing the perp walk, unlike the Atlanta educators. When we will see these sleazy operators go to jail for theft of government money and theft of services to students who were cheated of an education?
I wish some sharp attorney would help these students, past and present, recover their losses. This was a scam that “everyone” knew about but nothing was done for a long time.
On the positive side: Be glad you are not the kind of person who would defraud a young minority kid trying to get an education.
It’s amazing to watch, because they’ve been aware of the rip offs for so long. There have been studies and reports and congressional hearings for at least 7 years.
Ripping off low income people is part of it, but there’s also a whole additional groupthey prey on:
“For-profit colleges have been under fire for graduates’ high loan default rates. Now the industry is accused of targeting members of the military with aggressive and often misleading marketing. David Greene talks with Holly Petraeus, director of service member affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and the wife of General David Petraeus, who recently wrote about the issue in The New York Times.”
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/28/140868032/holly-petraeus-for-profit-colleges-misleading-soldiers
There really, really needs to be an investigation into corruption and capture here. I don’t know who will do it, however, since so many lawmakers and others in government are part of it.
These sleazy shysters are also infusing their AmericanGreed, lack of morals and ethics into the long drawn out kill of public education and the exploitation of all our students. They are like baracuda swimming with their mouths wide open and sharp teeth blinding everyone.
Multiplying like cockroaches.
Just wait until Obama & Co. are free to roam and suck at every teat of the 1% of the 1% for years to come. None of us will be able to put even our smallest toes into that shark tank. Educators will be their fish food – more than ever.
Is there no place on earth to get away from this cancer? Finland is too cold at my age. Any warm places…?
The situation at the state level is just as bad. The Florida corruption is unbelievable:
http://www.bradenton.com/2015/04/27/5768838/ex-employees-describe-evil-predatory.html
This is the beloved market at work! Do we really need more of this at the neighborhood school level? Charters, as we know, do the same thing (although many should not have opened in the first place). Tea party anti government regulation types, this is what lack of regulation leads to. The rest of us are warned.
“In 1585 Chapman was approached in a friendly fashion by John Wolfall, Sr., who offered to supply a bond of surety for a loan to furnish Chapman money “for his proper use in Attendance upon the then Right Honorable Sir Rafe Sadler Knight.” Chapman’s courtly ambitions led him into a trap. He apparently never received any money, but he would be plagued for many years by the papers he had signed.”
The same George Chapman who translated Homer, the same Rafe Sadler you watched on Wolf Hall. Ripping people off by promising them an education is really nothing new.