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Corinthian Colleges, with about 75,000 students in the US and Canada as well as online classes, owns 3 for-profit higher education brands: Everest College, Heald College, and WyoTech schools.
Corinthian receives $1.4B a year from federal education financing programs ($4 out of every $5 of its income).
Late last week, the company appeared headed for permanent closure, but an agreement reached Monday with DoE will allow it to stay in business with Federal oversight.
The US Department of Education has limited its access to federal funds after it failed to provide documents and other information to the agency.
That follows allegations that the company altered grades, student attendance records and falsified job-placement data used in advertisements for its schools.
[...]
The Education Department said that it heightened its oversight of the company after requesting data "multiple times" over the past five months
The company, based in Santa Ana, California, has previously been sued by California Attorney General Kamala Harris
for marketing fraud, arguing that the company mislead prospective students about how its graduates fared in the job market.
Worse, Everest officials paid nearby companies to hire their graduates for just long enough to make the school's statistics look better, then let them go. One Everest campus in Georgia paid companies $2,000 a head to keep Everest graduates on staff for 30 days.
[...]
the company will reportedly get the bridge funding it needs long enough to act on several DOE requests, including closing some of its schools and bringing in an independent auditor for its remaining operations. The DOE is weighing whether or not to reauthorize several Corinthian-owned schools for participation in the federal financial aid system, according to the Associated Press. The company will attempt to sell off significant parts of its 107-campus network.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25 2014, @09:54PM
the for-profits want some [measurable] stats by which to compare themselves
They should be careful what they wish for.
As an example, in the first study of charter school performance, 83 percent of the time they did no better than the standard public schools. [google.com]
Subsequent studies have reached similar conclusions.
One wonders how poor the results of the charter schools would be if they didn't get to cherry-pick their students to start with and couldn't expel them on a whim.
More on the "excellence" of charter schools. [wordpress.com]
...and with "measuring", you're heading in the direction of standardized testing--another boondoggle that sends public money to private hands.
.
we have to make sure that the said citizen is educated enough to form his or her own opinion and not be lead by demagogues
You're remembering the '60s (the children of the first GI Bill graduates).
California Governor Ronald Reagan et al tried very hard to totally crush the free thinking that you prescribe.
(When he became US President, that former president of the Screen Actors Guild made every effort to crush unions in a similar way.)
The 1 Percent needs cheap, compliant workers.
If those workers are heavily in debt, that is to the advantage of the elite class (re: compliance).
If they elites can't find those serfs here, they know that they can find them offshore.
That is the current paradigm.
-- gewg_