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The US Department of Education reports
The U.S. Department of Education took additional steps [April 14] to protect students and taxpayers and crack down on abuses within the for-profit sector by continuing its enforcement actions against Corinthian Colleges Inc. After a comprehensive review, the U.S. Department of Education has confirmed cases of misrepresentation of job placement rates to current and prospective students in Corinthian's Heald College system. The Department found 947 misstated placement rates and informed the company it is being fined about $30 million.
Specifically, the Department has determined that Heald College's inaccurate or incomplete disclosures were misleading to students; that they overstated the employment prospects of graduates of Heald's programs; and that current and prospective students of Heald could have relied upon that information as they were choosing whether to attend the school. Heald College provided the Department and its accreditors this inaccurate information as well.
The Department has also notified Corinthian it intends to deny Corinthian's pending applications to continue to participate in the Title IV federal student aid programs at its Heald Salinas and Stockton locations. Corinthian has 14 days to respond to the Department's notice, after which the Department will issue its final decision. Moreover, the Department has determined that Heald College is no longer allowed to enroll students and must prepare to help its current students either complete their education or continue it elsewhere.
The "Corinthian 15" debt strikers of February became the Corinthian 100 in late March with students refusing to pay back loans made under fraudulent conditions. Nine states' attorneys general agree that the bad loans should be forgiven.
Cable News Network notes
"Corinthian took advantage of students who were trying to build a better life for themselves and their families" said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.
[...]Tuition and fees for some of its programs cost more than five times those at other public colleges, according to the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau]. A bachelor's degree cost up to $75,000 and an associate's was as much as $43,000.
Corinthian was so expensive that many students needed to take out both federal loans and private loans to cover the cost. The college offered its own private loans, which came with interest rates sometimes twice as high as federal loans.
Related:
Federal Crackdown On For-Profit Colleges Claims Its First Victory
Update: Corinthian Colleges Will Sell Half its Campuses to Nonprofit Loan Servicer
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:14PM
So because these people voluntarily made a bad investment, it's considered okay for them to walk away from the obligations they racked up with others?
I think that's wrong. They shouldn't be "bailed out", so to speak, because of their bad decisions. If it was wrong to bail out bankers because of their bad investment decisions, then it should be wrong to bail out individuals who make bad investment decisions, too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:25PM
On the other hand, we *did* bail out the bankers... why would we bail out the bankers and not these people?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:33PM
Mistakes do get made. It was a mistake that that happened. That's why we shouldn't make the same mistake again. If these people are bailed out, then somebody who decides to invest his money by shoving it up his ass, shitting it into the toilet and flushing it away should be compensated. Of course, that would be a stupid thing to do. It's better to stop this idiocy now, even if one mistake has already happened, than it is to perpetuate it by encouraging others to make their own mistakes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:48PM
Here's a suggestion: what if we take all the money we gave the bankers back and gave it to these people who were preyed upon?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:53PM
Why the fuck would we do that? So they can waste it getting another shitty, useless education from another sketchy institution?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:57PM
At least, that way the money would return back into the economy instead of the pockets of the 0.01%
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:45PM
You're onto something there.
USA.gov could fund education for less than half of what is current being pissed away on this--with identical results.
Just cut out the unnecessary middlemen.
In fact, How The Government Could Make Public College Free For All Students[1] [googleusercontent.com] (orig[1]) [popularresistance.org]
[1] Recommended AdBlock filter to add before clicking the link: ##div.widget
Caveat: The idiot who made Blogspot's page boilerplate made the brilliant choice of using "widget" where he should have used "main-content", so this is not a permanent fix for all things.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:47PM
Every other attempt at socialism or communism has failed miserably. Why the fuck do you honestly think that applying those failed ideologies to higher education would be any different?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @11:14PM
I've posted on this topic several times before.
Become less ignorant. [google.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @11:17PM
I don't get what you're trying to accomplish here. Why are you linking to a Google Image search for "pierced scrotum"? What do pictures of scrotal piercings have to do with the many flaws of your beloved leftist crackpot ideas?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:05PM
Banksters: committed fraud.
Students: victims of fraud.
We should not bail out people who engage in fraud, and we should bail out fraud victims.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:24PM
The students aren't victims.
Nobody forced them to register at such schools.
Nobody forced them to take out large loans to pay for this schooling.
The students participated in this voluntarily.
You can only become a victim involuntarily.
You can't become a victim when you participate voluntarily in something that brings you harm.
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:31PM
God, you are stupid. Fraud doesn't have to with "force" as in hold a gun to your head. Fraud means you induce an action a person would otherwise not take, by lying to or misleading that person. This takes the ability to make a choice out of the hands of the victim's hands.
If you can't understand that, YOU need some remedial education, hopefully at a school that isn't going to cheat you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:40PM
The students may have been willing participants in somebody else's fradulent scheme.
I'm not disputing that.
But they were not victims.
They voluntarily chose to attend these schools, perhaps based on incomplete information.
They voluntarily chose to pay large amounts of money to these schools they chose to voluntarily attend.
They voluntarily chose to take out large loans in order to acquire the large amounts of money they voluntarily gave to these schools.
Nobody forced the students to do anything.
The students acted out of their own free will.
One cannot be a victim when one engages in something voluntarily, even if that something turns out to be harmful.
The students were not victims.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:49PM
You are a very negative person. All I'm seeing out of you is stuff like "You are a total retard." or "God, you are stupid." Maybe you need to find some source of happiness in your life.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday April 18 2015, @11:37PM
There's plenty, but there are also annoyances. Like people incapable of discerning the difference between a choice made through irresponsibility, and one induced by fraud (if what the fraudster said was true, the choice would have been a responsible choice). And this AC here who is laissez-faire-buyer-beware to the most extreme extent possible, is just a prolific idiot. No sense beating about the bush.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:35PM
The idea is that the people who made the bad investment did it after being deceived as to the value of the product being offered. If you buy a diamond and get a granite pebble, you've been defrauded and normally the law tends to go after whoever does the defrauding so they won't keep doing it. The kind of people who were victimized by these colleges aren't in a position to evaluate how good the product is, because they know little about education other than society as a whole sends the message that more education is the key to a better life.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:40PM
If you can't evaluate a product or service that you're considering buying, especially one costing tens of thousands of dollars, then it should be obvious that you shouldn't be spending your money on this product or service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:50PM
You're trying to evaluate the education you need in order to make the determination of whether or not the education you're about to purchase is worth it...
Your logic makes as much sense as: I need this job to gain experience which I need to apply for this job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:56PM
No, it's different. In order to consume an education, one needs to already have some intellectual abilities. These abilities will exist prior to receiving any education. The education just enhances what's already there. The basic level of intellectual ability needed prior to pursuing an education should render one able to determine if an opportunity is obviously bad. If these people lack this basic raw intellect, then any education, regardless of how or where they receive it, will be a waste.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @08:36PM
In order to consume an education
You don't "consume" an education anymore than you "consume" data. This is some terrifying corporate propaganda right here.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @08:48PM
If you've learned something from this thread then you owe us $14,329.87. We'll email your certificate to the same address registered to your PayPal account. Don't forget to apply for our "Thread Master's Program" where we offer mod points and a starting karma position of 10 points (12 points if you get your loan through our DIY Debt program course offering). Learn from your mistakes, at Corinthian!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:13PM
Smart people do stupid shit all the time as soon as they get out of the area in which they have knowledge or skill. This why people look for accreditation when choosing a school, or board certification when choosing a neurologist, or any such certification in any area, because no matter how brilliant a person is, that person can't know everything in the world. We use these certifications as a guideline and rationally so, otherwise we could never do anything at all because our time would be so wholly wasted. Corinthian committed fraud in obtaining accreditation and so it is Corinthian which is the bad actor here. All of those loans should be taken out of Corinthian's hide because it was the fraudster, and but for that fraud, those loans wouldn't have been made.
Anyway, feels like a Corinthian executive wants to use SN to bitch about being busted. Tough shit buddy.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:46AM
My point was about experience - people who go to for-profit colleges have no real-world experience with education alternatives and don't have the background to evaluate how good or bad the educational product offered actually is.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:49PM
I've been behind these people at the grocery store, waiting while they're paying for their groceries with welfare chits.
They always have the latest iPhone, or maybe one revision back at worst.
They're chattering away on their iPhones, talking about how they saw on Facebook that one of their "baby daddies" was "cheating" on them.
They clearly have Internet access if they can access Facebook.
So if they can access Facebook, they can access Google.
If they can access Google, they can search for information about these private colleges before forking over big wads of cash.
But they don't do this.
They aren't victims.
They just don't use their brains.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday April 19 2015, @12:31AM
Payday loans offer spectacularly bad deals to borrowers. Many borrowers become trapped in a cycle of debt because of the punitive terms for those who are unable to repay the debt in time. Yet the people who borrow are often desperate, and the alternative is loan sharks.
Should such loans be legal, or not?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday April 19 2015, @01:58AM
I shudder at disgust every time I pass one of those merchants of misery.
One even has a logo that at first glance, looks like a crown... but when you look closer, its a pair of handcuffs.
And they ain't cheap either!!! ( 1 page .pdf ) [paydaymoneycenters.com]
I really feel for anyone forced to visit these places, and because these places exist, people are often forced to use them.
I guess I am trying to say is one should not buy something they can't pay for, and people who have something to sell should not sell to people who can't afford to buy it. We already have way too much price inflation because sellers know the buyers can be led to patronize financial institutions for a quick cash settlement that will meet the seller's asking price. Nowhere is this more glaringly obvious than house prices. We have all this price inflation because people are so willing to mortgage their futures for today's handshake and sign-off. Without all this extra liquidity injected into the economy as debt, buyers would have to exert restraint on purchases, as well as sellers also have to exert restraint on asking prices.
The bankers are making a mint out of all this misery. They never had the money to loan in the first place. They just created a note, and now expect real usury on funds they simply penned into existence. I, for one, am really fed up with our Government's cozying up to these people, giving them charter to counterfeit our currency system for profit.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @05:04AM
> I shudder at disgust every time I pass one of those merchants of misery.
There is more to it than that.
These articles were written by a professor studying urban poverty who actually went and worked as a teller on a weekly basis and at a non-profit predatory loan help hotline in order to get direct personal experience of how it works in real life:
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-high-cost-for-the-poor-of-using-a-bank [newyorker.com]
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-good-are-payday-loans [newyorker.com]
I think the prevalence of payday loan places is an indictment of how credit unions have failed to fill the gap -- they talk about community, but too many of them are operated like banks, nickle-and-diming people who aren't 'profitable' when they should be helping them out. Its one of the reasons I opened an account at a community bank the last time I moved -- all of the local CUs were behaving like banks so I figured I would skip the pretense.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday April 19 2015, @06:38AM
Interesting links...
I wonder if the "payday loan" companies did not exist, then if the landlord hikes the rent, he has to make evictions because the people can't go into debt to pay the hike. Is not even the availability of selling oneself into debt the cause of us doing it, simply because others can economically force the issue?
I keep seeing prices spiraling higher and higher, despite mass outsourcing of employment. For now, it seems like people are willingly going into debt so as to meet the seller's price. I, for one, would love to see this end-around-carry by going into debt stop, and when sellers hike price, sales stop. The buyers are the ones who set the price anyway, and if they are kept from bidding the prices up, this will stop. In addition, it will put pressure on lawmakers to not exact tax from the lowest segments of the economy, as those are the ones actually spending 100% of what they get to local businessmen. Every dollar taken from a minimum wage worker is a dollar taken from the till of a merchant. Once the merchants begin lobbying Congress, we will see Congress having to do some serious reform.
We can only live on debt for so long, then there is no longer money to pay for interest, and the thing folds back in on itself. Its a really nasty little illusion of wealth.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:48AM
The existence of usurious loans in society points to other problems. You can ask many such questions. Why does a society like ours have government-sponsored gambling? Why can a drug company profit from the misery and poverty of sick people for twenty years, and finally have to give up their patent on a drug, then make a minor change that stops the drug from becoming generic? And so on. Why do we, as a society, consider preying on the weak and vulnerable to be acceptable?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:04PM
You clearly don't comprehend fraud.
If they had been told "this education is 2x most other schools, and you have a 10% chance of getting a job in your chosen field on graduation" -- then yeah, I could buy the idea that the students made a bad choice. That didn't happen here -- the students were induced to make what appeared to be a rational decision by Corinthian's fraud. That's a totally different situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:08PM
If the student believed those claims without verifying them independently, and then voluntarily paid the school a huge sum of money, then it was the student who fucked up. The student fucked up first by not verifying the claims, and once again by paying out a large sum of money without having verified the claims.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:27PM
You are a total retard, or a Corinthian exec.
Seriously, I'm not trolling. Your position is that all people should have the absolute ability to accurately evaluate everything in the world: cars, airplanes, schools, medical diagnoses, GPG source code, whether a piece of lettuce has e. coli on it or not, etc. etc.
Back when our technology consisted of broken rocks, it might have been possible for a person to be a total expert on all human knowledge. But we've moved on and that means that you have to trust accreditations, certifications, standard/testing agencies, and so forth because there is no fucking way that in one lifetime, you could personally evaluate everything you buy -- you'd have every piece of food you eat under a microscope so before you even make it outside, you've probably spent half your day just looking at your food to make sure it is safe from surface contaminants. Anyway, you can take your moronic buyer beware attitude back to the stone age where that might have been possible, and let the rational people realize that the much more economic and utilitarian answer to fraud, is not to tell people they should learn to be experts on everything and suck it up if they fail, but is to punish the fraudulent fuckers when they get caught.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:42PM
No, I'm not affiliated with any college. I just support the notion that irresponsible people who make really fucking dumb decisions should have to face the consequences of those dumb decisions.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:50PM
Caveat Idioti? Carpe dimes? Moron Labia? There were just asking for it. Semper Fraudulatus!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sjames on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:18PM
There was also a matter of fraud used to induce them to enter the situation. Because there was fraud, surely even the most extreme libertarian should be able to see that the students obligations are at an end and that the school needs to be the one paying any additional obligations they fraudulently induced the students to take on.
TL:DR, yes, the students should be free of their obligations.