ITT Educational Services (ESI) provides technology-oriented undergraduate and graduate education through its ITT Technical Institutes and Daniel Webster College.
American Commercial Colleges Inc. has agreed to pay the United States at least $1-million over the next five years to settle a whistle-blower lawsuit accusing it of defrauding the government, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday.
The latest enrollment figures from for-profit colleges suggest that damning publicity over their business practices, as well as tighter government regulations that followed it, has done deep and long-lasting damage to the industry. Forecasts for the five biggest publicly-traded schools now call for revenue declines to continue at least through fiscal 2014. Share prices are down between 32% and 86% in the past two years, turning some once-heady investments into major losers, as seen in a stock chart.
Developers seeking city financing for projects that include for-profit colleges will face new standards under a proposal recommended for approval Tuesday by the Milwaukee Common Council's Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee.
The leading lights of the for-profit higher education sector might be unfairly stereotyped as hard-nosed types. Meanwhile, people from Yorkshire have been unfairly stereotyped as keeping a particularly tight rein on their finances.
Corinthian Colleges operates in an industry criticized for deceptive marketing and low graduation and job placement rates. Why would two respected public figures join its board?
Attorney General Lisa Madigan today urged U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to strengthen oversight of for-profit colleges and filed comments with the Department of Education in support of requiring schools to ensure students can pay off their loans and to make more accurate and complete disclosures about their job placement rates.
The state of student debt in California, especially at public universities, is better than the rest of the country. That doesn’t mean the situation is manageable for all student borrowers.
Uncovered confidential contracts reveal that millions of dollars may have been illegally funneled from private universities to fund the success of a club soccer team.
Apollo Group Inc (NASDAQ:APOL), the for-profit education company that is the parent of University of Phoenix, looks like a great deal on the surface. At 7.9 times TTM earnings and over $1.2 billion in net cash, it almost looks like a “too good to be true” situation. It is. The company’s business model is no longer viable and I believe that Apollo’s recent downsizing efforts are just the beginning.
The Milwaukee Common Council on Tuesday unamimously approved standards for for-profit colleges and for developers who seek to use for-profit colleges to anchor property developments.
Mitch Daniels is agnostic on the various delivery modes of higher education or the tax status of colleges offering them, as long as students are getting a quality education at an appropriate price.
Two Democratic senators used a Congressional hearing on Wednesday to condemn for-profit colleges as preying on active members of the armed forces to receive federal tuition aid by increasing enrollments but ignoring academic quality.
A Wells Fargo stock analyst, who boosts for-profit colleges while frequently overlooking their abuses, lays the blame for one particularly predatory college's high failure rate at the feet of low-income students, or, as he calls them, "subprime" students.
Shares of for-profit education companies traded mostly lower on Tuesday as Corinthian Colleges Inc. disclosed that it is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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 federal aid to actually train students to earn a living? Why else would it send its CEO to offer wholly incredible comments before a Senate committee? And what was General Wesley Clark doing speaking at APSCU's annual convention?
The Obama administration has resumed efforts to rein in abuses by for-profit colleges that leave students deep in debt and unable to find decent jobs, renewing a 2-year-old battle over regulations that has produced little more than bitterness and litigation.
The sort of people who go through business school, one might think, would have no problem with the idea of education being provided for a profit. But when Thunderbird, a struggling school based in Arizona, announced three months ago that it was planning a partnership with Laureate, an education company, there was uproar among its alumni and students. A petition calling for the deal to be halted has won almost 2,000 signatures. By “selling out”, Thunderbird’s management is diluting the school’s brand and cheapening its degrees, it says.
One of the more common complaints against for-profit colleges is that the institutions make promises to prospective students about job placement and salary that the schools don’t make good on. A woman in Missouri recently sued one such for-profit school, saying it misled her about its medical assistant program. She had been seeking somewhere between $2-4 million in damages, but the jury went ahead and awarded her $13 million.