Mercedes Schneider tracked down the tax filings of the “charity” at the heart of the college admissions scam.
You will be interested to learn that the cover for the heist was a nonprofit dedicated to helping the “underpriviled.”
Well, you can’t open a charity for the “privileged,” now, can you?
When I first heard about a federal investigation of cheating and rigging of the college admissions process on behalf of wealthy people willing to pay, I completely misjudged the ramifications. I was not surprised.
Why was I not surprised? I was not surprised because admission to elite colleges and universities has long been rigged, though not as blatantly as the latest scheme. In the present story, ringers were paid to take the tests, and test answers were changed by proctors on behalf of students whose parents paid the price. That’s awfully blatant.
The old-time rigging was more subtle. Start with legacy admissions. If the college had eight applicants for every place, a student whose parent or sibling went to the same institution was likely to be admitted despite his or her grades or scores. That’s unfair.
Then there is the rigging that occurs when the college puts too much weight on the SAT or ACT, which favors students from wealthy homes, who have gone to the best schools and had advantageous life experiences. Numerous studies, including some released by the testing companies, acknowledge that the GPA (grade point average) is a better predictor of college success than the college admission test taken on a single day. That is why more than 1,000 colleges and universities have become “test-optional.” Go to the Fairtest website to see the list of test-optional institutions of higher education.
The scores on the SAT/ACT are also affected by tutoring, which is a function of parental income. So, not only do wealthy families begin with a big advantage, they can multiply their advantage by paying for tutors who are skilled in training students to raise their scores. Tutors can be very expensive. They may costs hundreds of dollars an hour. This skews the admissions process yet again towards those with money.
It would have been far simpler for the families involved in the present scam to pay a tutor $5,000-10,000, and they would have not been investigated by the FBI.
But there is one more way to get preferential treatment. Give a large gift to the college or university shortly before your child applies for admission. Daniel Golden, a journalist then at the Wall Street Journal, now at ProPublica, wrote a book in 2006 called The Price of Admission, about how wealthy people gave money to get their children into elite colleges. He referred to a little-known family named Kushner in New Jersey. A real-estate developer named Charles Kushner, who had graduated from New York University, made a gift of $2.5 million to Harvard in 1998. Not long after, his son Jared was admitted to Harvard.
Golden wrote:
I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.
Another for-profit chain of colleges has gone into bankruptcy and its students ar3 left holding the bag, loaded with debt and worthless degrees. Policing these institutions is the job of the Education Department. For years, the for-profit colllege Industry has hiredlobbyists from both parties to protect them.
The New York Times reports:
“When the Education Department approved a proposal by Dream Center, a Christian nonprofit with no experience in higher education, to buy a troubled chain of for-profit colleges, skeptics warned that the charity was unlikely to pull off the turnaround it promised.
“What they didn’t foresee was just how quickly and catastrophically it would fail.
“Barely a year after the takeover, dozens of Dream Center campuses are nearly out of money and may close as soon as Friday. More than a dozen others have been sold in the hope they can survive.
“The affected schools — Argosy University, South University and the Art Institutes — have about 26,000 students in programs spanning associate degrees in dental hygiene and doctoral programs in law and psychology. Fourteen campuses, mostly Art Institute locations, have a new owner after a hastily arranged transfer involving private equity executives. More than 40 others are under the control of a court-appointed receiver who has accused school officials of trying to keep the doors open by taking millions of dollars earmarked for students.
“The problems, arising amid the Trump administration’s broad efforts to deregulate the for-profit college industry, began almost immediately after Dream Center acquired the schools in 2017. The charity, started 25 years ago and affiliated with a Pentecostal megachurch in Los Angeles, has a nationwide network of outreach programs for problems like homelessness and domestic violence and said it planned to use the schools to fund its expansion.
“Now its students — many with credits that cannot be easily transferred — are stuck in a meltdown. On Wednesday, members of the faculty at Argosy’s Chicago and Northern Virginia campuses told students that they had been fired and instructed to remove their belongings. In Phoenix, an unpaid landlord locked students out of their classrooms. In California, a dean advised students two months away from graduation not to invite family to attend from out of town.
“In less than a month, everything I have worked for the past three years has been taken from me,” said Jayne Kenney, who is pursuing her doctorate in clinical psychology at Argosy’s Chicago campus. “I am also conscious of the fact that what seems like the swift fall of an ax in less than one month has in reality been festering for years.”
“The fall accelerated last week when the Education Department cut off federal student loan funds to Argosy after the court-appointed receiver said school officials had taken about $13 million owed to students at 22 campuses and used it for expenses like payroll. The students, who had borrowed extra money to cover things like rent and groceries, were forced to use food banks or skip classes for lack of bus fare.
“Lauren Jackson, a single mother seeking a doctorate at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology, an Argosy school in Chicago, did not receive the roughly $10,000 she was due in January. She has been paying expenses for her and her 6-year-old daughter with borrowed money and GoFundMe donations.
“On Tuesday, after three months of not paying her rent, she received an eviction notice.
“I didn’t want to go home and tell my baby that Mommy may not be a doctor,” said Ms. Jackson, whose school could close Friday. “Now I don’t want to go home and tell her that we don’t have a home.”
‘Bad for Everyone’
“Led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Education Department has reversed an Obama-era crackdown on troubled vocational and career schools and allowed new and less experienced entrants into the field.
“The industry was on its heels, but they’ve been given new life by the department under DeVos,” said Eileen Connor, the director of litigation at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending.
“Ms. DeVos, who invested in companies with ties to for-profit colleges before taking office, has made it an agency priority to unfetter for-profit schools by eliminating restrictions on them. She also allowed several for-profit schools to evade even those loosened rules by converting to nonprofits.
“That’s what Dream Center wanted to do when it asked to buy the remains of Education Management Corporation.
“Education Management, once the nation’s second-largest for-profit college operator, was struggling for survival after an investigation into its recruiting tactics resulted in a $200 million settlement in 2015. Despite those troubles, it had 65,000 students, and some of its schools maintained strong reputations.
“Dream Center is connected to Angelus Temple, which was founded by Aimee Semple McPherson, a charismatic evangelist once portrayed by Faye Dunaway in a TV movie, “The Disappearance of Aimee.” It is affiliated with the Foursquare Church, an evangelical denomination with outposts in 146 countries.
“Buying a chain of schools “aligns perfectly with our mission, which views education as a primary means of life transformation,” Randall Barton, the foundation’s managing director, said when Dream Center announced its plan.
“But Dream Center had never run colleges. It hired a team including Brent Richardson, who worked on the conversion of Grand Canyon University to a nonprofit as its chairman, to lead the schools’ corporate parent, Dream Center Education Holdings. He stepped down in January.
“Alarms were ringing from the moment the takeover was proposed. Dream Center’s effort to buy the failing ITT Technical Institutes schools had fallen apart after resistance from the Obama administration. When it asked to buy Education Management’s schools, consumer groups, members of Congress and some regional accreditors raised concerns.
“But in late 2017, Ms. DeVos’s agency gave preliminary approval to Dream Center’s plan.
“Almost immediately, the organization discovered the schools were in worse shape than expected, with aging facilities and outdated technology. The universities “were, on the whole, failing without hope for redemption,” the receiver wrote in a court filing last month.
“Dream Center had anticipated a $30 million profit in its first year, Mr. Barton wrote in a recent legal filing. Instead, it was facing a $38 million loss.
“And Dream Center showed little inclination to curb the tactics that got Education Management in trouble, like misleading students about their employment prospects. The executives it installed cultivated a high-pressure culture in which profit surpassed all other concerns, according to a report filed last year by Thomas J. Perrelli, the court-appointed monitor overseeing the schools’ compliance with their state settlements.
“By the end of 2018, Dream Center was facing eviction on at least nine campuses and owed creditors more than $40 million, and Education Department officials scrambled to plan for what looked like an imminent implosion.
“We know all too well that precipitous school closures are bad for everyone involved and leave too many students high and dry,” said Liz Hill, an agency spokeswoman. “Teams of people at the department have been working tirelessly on behalf of students — caught up in this situation through no fault of their own — with the singular goal in mind to ensure as many students as possible had options to complete their education.”“The way they presented the receivership was that it would be beneficial to the students, but it’s actually been detrimental,” said Marina Awed, a student at an Argosy school in California, Western State College of Law, who was scheduled to graduate in two months. “It shouldn’t be this easy to defraud the Department of Education.”
Disgraceful.
Scott Walker tried to turn the University of Wisconsin into a career-preparation institution. No more of this “search forvtruth” stuff.
Happily, Walker was defeated by Tony Evers, thevstate’s Superintendent of Instruction.
But this article suggests that Walker’s ideas will prevail anyway.
The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point just went through a process of planning for the future. In the early form of the plan, the following majors would be cut: geography, geology, French, German, two- and three-dimensional art, and history.
At a time of budget cuts, administrators decided to cut the majors where demand was lowest. Students increasingly want education that prepares them to get a job.
In the spring of 2018, administrators offered a plan “to add majors in chemical engineering, computer-information systems, conservation-law enforcement, finance, fire science, graphic design, management, and marketing….
“Fierce backlash to the proposal from students, faculty, and alumni pushed the administration to reconsider its original plan. By the time the final proposal was released in mid-November 2018, it was less expansive, though still forceful. Six programs would be cut, including the history major. The university seemed to be eyeing degree programs with low numbers of graduates, and nationally, the number of graduates from bachelor’s programs in history has had the steepest decline of any major in recent years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.”
Dis Scott Walker win the ideological war? Will the University of Wisconsin produce graduates who can get a job but know nothing about fascism?
The for-profit college chain Education Corporation of America is closing down. This is the kind of college that Betsy DeVos adores, wants to deregulate, and hopes will grow. But this one is a goner, leaving students with lots of debt and no education.
“The Education Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit college chains, announced last week it was immediately closing more than 70 campuses in 21 states. Between fifteen and twenty thousand students are now in the unenviable position of being thousands of dollars in debt with no completed degrees or certifications and, reportedly, little prospect of being able to transfer their academic credits to different schools.
“NBC reports that in some instances, students were told in the middle of class — some of them while in the middle of their certification exams — that their school no longer exists. Their student debt, however, sure does.”
Sara Goldrick-Rab and Jesse Stommel challenge the recent spate of books and articles complaining about college students.
They write:
For broader participation to lead to positive outcomes — for example, the completion of degrees without huge debt burdens — students must have good experiences in the classroom. This is especially important yet incredibly difficult as the new economics of college are compromising the time, energy, and money that students and many of their professors have to spend on quality learning.
These are the core challenges of college today — and yet they are too often ignored. Instead, symptoms of those problems dominate air time, as the stereotype persists of “academically adrift” “snowflakes” “coddled” by their universities. Consider the recent essay by Nancy Bunge, “Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers. It Hurts Students,” which takes on student evaluations. Bunge contends the “unearned arrogance encouraged by the heavy reliance on student evaluations helps produce passive, even contemptuous students who undermine the spirit of the class and lower its quality for everyone.”
Her enemy appears to be sites like the often-lamented Rate My Professors, but her piece also attacks the students themselves, and reinforces a set of assertions largely drawn from one influential yet extremely narrow study, Academically Adrift, by Richard Arum and Jospia Roksa. The limited learning lamented by the authors is said to be linked to insufficiently challenging instructors, and according to Bunge those instructors are not demanding more of their students because they want to get good grades. She cites a Chronicle survey in which faculty members claim that students are “harder to teach” these days. The overall narrative suggests we should feel sorry for the faculty. If only they could have more-engaged students to teach.
There is an alternative explanation. Today’s college students are the most overburdened and undersupported in American history. More than one in four have a child, almost three in four are employed, and more than half receive Pell Grants but are left far short of the funds required to pay for college. Rather than receiving help from their parents to pay for college, even the youngest college students often have to use their loans to pay their parents’ bills.
Whereas previous generations could turn to food stamps for help, today’s students have to first work long hours to qualify for the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Similarly, students years ago could quickly talk to an adviser for help, but now they may be sharing that adviser with more than 500 other students. “Kids these days” aren’t kids at all. But this fact is neglected by many researchers and by too many faculty members who think of their own experiences in college rather than their students’ when crafting teaching plans…
In other words, the work of higher education — as with all of education — has to begin with a deep respect for students. They are not mere data points, not just rows in an online grade book. Students are human first. And so are their teachers. The exploitation of adjuncts, erosions to tenure, and the overall dismal working conditions throughout much of higher education contributes to faculty frustration and anger — which is now spilling over to affect students.
College has become the place America loves to hate, and college professors and students are the unwitting victims. It doesn’t require much cynicism to recognize this as part of a political plan to destabilize or even reverse the democratization of higher education.
But we can do better. As educators, we need to lead the way and design our pedagogical approaches for the students we have, not the students we wish we had. This requires approaches that are responsive, inclusive, adaptive, challenging, and compassionate. And it requires that institutions find more creative ways to support teachers and prepare them for the work of teaching. This is not a theoretical exercise — it is a practical one.
In education, Governor-Elect Gavin Newsom has three major challenges.
The incoming administration of Governor-elect Gavin Newsom will not be cleaning up a mess. Governor Jerry Brown has been a good steward of the state during his time in office.
But Newsom faces three distinct challenges in the field of education. Although Governor Brown significantly increased spending for education, California has large unmet needs and much catching-up to do to maintain its edge as an incubator of talent and innovation, and of equal opportunity for all.
First, to fund K-12 education.
Second, to restore California’s historic tradition of tuition-free higher education.
Third, to pass legislation to assure charter school accountability and transparency and to hold charters to the same ethical standards as public schools.
No thanks to the do-Nothing U.S. Department of Education, which sides with for-Profit, predatory “colleges,” you know, the market.
For Immediate Release
December 6, 2018
CRL Statement on Closure of Education Corp. of America Campuses
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Birmingham, Alabama, based for-profit college owner Education Corporation of America (ECA) has announced that it is closing its campuses across the country after the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) suspended their accreditation. The closure of ECA’s campuses include those operating as Brightwood College, Brightwood Career Institute, Ecotech Institute, Golf Academy of America, and Virginia College. More than 19,000 students were enrolled at ECA owned colleges.
Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) Senior Policy Counsel Whitney Barkley-Denney released the following statement:
“ECA’s closure is long overdue. Their campuses, including Virginia College, has a long record of providing substandard education at exorbitant prices. For years, CRL and other education advocates have sounded the alarm to federal and state governments about the risks and harms associated with predatory, underperforming for-profit colleges. Students who were lured to an ECA campus should have their loans discharged as they decide their next education path—being straddled with crippling student loan debt after their college failed them shouldn’t be a burden that they have to carry.”
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For more information or to schedule an interview with a CRL spokesperson please email: ricardo.quinto@responsible
We saw at her confirmation hearing two years ago how ill-prepared Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is when questioned persistently about her views and actions. We saw a repeat performance when she was questioned by Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes.” This is a person who is unaccustomed to being held accountable.
Now, at least five committees in the new Democratic-controlled House of Representatives intend to question her about her many controversial efforts to protect for-profit colleges, not students; to roll back protections for transgender students; to put the burden of proof on rape victims, not their alleged assailants; and many more of her policies intended to weaken civil rights protections and the duty of government to defend the weak and vulnerable, not the ruthless and powerful.
For two years, Democrats watched with fury as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sought to dismantle nearly every significant Obama administration education policy.
Now, they’re gearing up to fight back. Lots of them.
As many as five Democratic-led House committees next year could take on DeVos over a range of issues such as her rollback of regulations aimed at predatory for-profit colleges, the stalled processing of student loan forgiveness and a rewrite of campus sexual assault policies.
“Betsy DeVos has brought a special mix of incompetence and malevolence to Washington — and that’s rocket fuel for every committee in a new Congress that will finally provide oversight,” said Seth Frotman, who resigned as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s top student loan official earlier in protest of Trump administration policies likely to be examined by Democrats.
Even in a Republican-controlled Congress, DeVos had a strained relationship at times with some committees. Her main priorities, such as expanding school choice, were largely ignored as lawmakers hashed out government funding bills. Now she will have to answer to House Democrats wielding gavels, several of whom have long worked on education issues and have been among her most vocal critics.
She came to her job expecting Congress to allow her to shift $20 Billion from Title I to Vouchers. That never happened. Her only funding victory was an increase in funding for charter schools, which now get $450 million, which they certainly don’t need, since they are the plaything of the billionaires.
Many committees are waiting to interview her, including the House Education Committee, chaired by Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia; the Appropriations subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut; and the Financial Services Committee, chaired by Rep.Maxine Waters of California.
This is a useful summary by the National Education Policy Center that demonstrates the connections among poverty, race, and college preparatory courses.
It shows the proportion of students from different racial and ethnic groups enrolled in high-poverty and low-poverty schools, and how the poverty of the students is related to college-prep course offerings.
Diane Ravitch's blog 