NEWS: Teacher Fired for speaking the Truth!

Back in May of this Year Valerie Munson, an instructor for Everest College in Califorina candidly stated that the school is not accredited and cannot certify students in the medical trades. After that incident she was harassed and terrorized by her superiors. She is currently seeking damages for lost wages, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Munson says that when a student asked her if the school was accredited, she truthfully answered that it was not. She said she truthfully said that students would not be certified upon graduation, could not transfer course units, and did not qualify to take continuing education classes.
Munson's students were "enraged and emotionally devastated" at this news, and said they felt they were "lied to during enrollment," according to the complaint.

... Munson claims harassment and retaliation followed. She says her supervisors told her "to put a lid on the whole accreditation thing."
She claims her bosses told her, "You know we cannot have this, because this could have a huge affect on our attrition," according to the complaint.

To see the full story Please click HERE

NEWS: Westwood College campuses in Fort Worth, Houston, Dallas may lose licenses

Check this OUT!

Westwood College campuses in Fort Worth, Houston and Dallas are under fire again, with a state regulatory agency saying the for-profit schools may lose their licenses after concerns about potentially deceptive and fraudulent practices.

The action follows an undercover federal investigation this summer at Westwood and 14 other for-profit colleges. The investigation, by the Government Accountability Office, found that all 15 made deceptive or questionable statements about graduation rates, guaranteed jobs after graduation or exaggerated potential earnings. Four of the colleges encouraged fraudulent practices, such as having students submit false information about their financial status, the watchdog agency reported.

The report said a Westwood representative in Texas coached an undercover investigator to not report $250,000 in savings to qualify for federal aid. Posing as a prospective student, the investigator indicated that the $68,000 cost of the program was affordable. But the financial aid officer said it was not the government's business how much money the applicant had in the bank. "The fraud would have made the undercover applicant eligible for more than $2,000 in grants a year," the GAO reported.

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/09/10/2459261/westwood-college-campuses-in-fort.html#ixzz0zI6DHYVG

News: Everest College students angry over certification

HAYWARD, CA (KGO) -- Nearly three dozen Everest College students are furious they haven't received the medical certifications they paid for. They refused to go to class until they get some answers.

Whether they attend class or not, the students have to pay $100.

Some of the students have been attending school for eight months. Three weeks ago they found out that the college does not supply them with a certificate they were told they would get, in order to obtain the medical positions they want.

The students are all studying medical assisting and they paid $16,000 for an eight-month course. They were told the credits earned at the school do not transfer to any community or four-year college and that has many of them angry.

The AAMA told ABC7 that the accreditation the college mentions is one that is given to any career school or college in order to operate. It doesn't mean they can certify medical assistance.

see the whole story please click here

Obama Cracks Down on For-Profit Colleges

The Obama administration released a proposal that would tighten for-profit colleges’ access to federal student aid, threatening growth in the industry that received $26.5 billion in U.S. funds last year.

The proposed rules released today by the U.S. Department of Education would link U.S. student aid eligibility at Apollo Group Inc., ITT Educational Services Inc., Career Education Corp. and other education companies to former students’ salaries and debt repayment rates. The rules may cut off access to federal student grants and loans at about 5 percent of all for- profit education programs, Secretary Arne Duncan said in a telephone call with reporters yesterday.

Students earning two-year associates’ degrees at for-profit colleges had an average student-loan debt of $14,000 in 2007- 2008, about twice that of students at nonprofit colleges, the department said in a statement. While most education companies provide valuable training and skills, high-cost education programs that lead to low-wage jobs are harming students, leaving them with hard-to-pay debts, Duncan said.

“We want to hit the ones at the bottom, those that simply aren’t working for students,” Duncan said in the press briefing. “The 5 percent would frankly be the bottom of the barrel.”

Stocks Decline

Education companies have been hurt as investors have waited for the Education Department to write its regulations. The Standard & Poor’s 1500 Education Services Sub-Industry Index, which tracks nine education companies, fell 13 percent over the past 12 months as of yesterday’s close.

Apollo, the Phoenix-based operator of the University of Phoenix and the biggest U.S. education company, fell 32 percent over the past 12 months in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. ITT Educational slid 20 percent.

If the rules were in effect today, programs enrolling about 8 percent of the students at for-profit colleges nationwide would lose eligibility, the Education Department said. There were about 1.8 million students enrolled in education companies’ programs in 2008, according to a June 24 report from Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Tuition Impact

The rules may hurt Carmel, Indiana-based ITT Educational, Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based Career Education and Santa Ana, California-based Corinthian Colleges Inc., because they may not meet the repayment standard and they offer high-priced programs, said Trace Urdan, an analyst with Signal Hill Capital Group in San Francisco. Expensive courses of study that lead to relatively low-paying careers, such as those in criminal justice, may begin to disappear, he said yesterday in a telephone interview.

“You will see some programs being terminated,” Urdan said. “No one’s going to be kicked out into the street, but programs that are no longer profitable at contemplated prices will be ended.”

Under the proposed rules, the Education Department would monitor loan repayments and starting salaries among graduates of for-profit colleges. To remain fully eligible for student loans, education companies would have to show the agency that at least 45 percent of their former students are paying off their student loans, or that graduates pay less than 8 percent of their total income or less than a fifth of their “discretionary income” on student loan payments.

Lose Eligibility

When a program’s repayment levels and debt-to-income ratios both miss those targets, its access to federal student aid may be restricted, the statement said. That may mean that the program would have to limit enrollment growth or warn applicants that the program’s graduates have high debt levels. About 55 percent of for-profit college programs would have to issue such warnings if the proposed regulations were now in effect, the statement said.

Companies would lose their eligibility for aid if less than 35 percent of former students are repaying and their educational debt is at least 12 percent of their annual total income or 30 percent of discretionary income, the statement said. No more than 5 percent of programs nationally will lose U.S. aid access under the regulations during their first year, the department said.

Average annual tuition at for-profit colleges was $14,000 in 2009, compared with $2,500 at community colleges, Harkin’s report said.

Industry Reaction

Congressional staffers who were briefed on the proposed rules said they expected the education industry to fight them. The Career College Association, a Washington-based industry group, didn’t respond to telephone calls and e-mails requesting comment. Apollo company officials declined to comment because they hadn’t seen the new regulations. “Apollo cautions against policy with the potential for unintended consequences that could restrict educational access, limit students’ choices or unfairly disadvantage hundreds of thousands of historically underserved students,” Manny Rivera, a spokesman, said in an e- mail.

Robert Jaffe, a spokesman for Corinthian, Lauren Littlefield, a spokesman for ITT Educational and Jeff Leshay, a spokesman for Career Education, didn’t immediately return telephone calls seeking comment.

While the proposed rules are a step in the right direction that may eliminate many abuses of the student financial aid system, the government may have set the standard for loan repayment too low, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars & Admissions Officers in Washington.

‘Rampant Waste’

“I defy anyone to say that an institution with a 45 percent loan-repayment rate represents the gold standard,” he said in a telephone interview. “This says something about how rampant waste and fraud and abuse are in this sector.”

While the expectations for repayment appear low, the rules appear to have some “real teeth” in them, said Pauline Abernathy, who oversees policy and advocacy for the Institute for College Access and Success in Washington. Her group will urge the administration to strengthen the regulations in the 45- day comment period that starts today.

“This regulation is plain common sense,” Harkin said in a statement. “If a school can’t show that its students are repaying their college debt and not defaulting, this is a sure sign that the school is failing to prepare its students for gainful employment, as the law requires.”

An earlier draft of the proposal said that starting salaries would be estimated using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The proposed rules instead call for the salary data to come directly from graduating students’ Internal Revenue Service filings, the Education Department said.

‘Actual Wages’

“Therein lies the problem for the sector given that actual wages are generally lower than the Bureau of Labor Statistics data,” said Jarrell Price, an analyst with Height Analytics in Washington who follows the for-profit education sector. “There’s a lot of uncertainty about the income levels of graduates of for profit colleges.”

Federal aid to for-profit colleges jumped to $26.5 billion last year from $4.6 billion in 2000, according to the Education Department. About 96 percent of students who graduated from for- profit colleges in 2008 had taken out student loans, and 24 percent of that graduating class had more than $40,000 in U.S. student loan debt, according to the June report from Harkin.

Taxpayers’ Right

“These schools -- and their investors -- benefit from billions of dollars in subsidies from taxpayers, and in return, taxpayers have a right to know that these programs are providing solid preparation for a job,” Duncan said in the statement. “The rules we’ve proposed today will help ensure that career college and training programs use federal student aid to prepare students for success.”

The government has been determining for-profit programs’ eligibility for student grants and loans in part by monitoring default rates. Those rates underestimate the proportion of students who don’t pay back loans on time, because many receive postponements known as forbearances or deferments. The new rules link a program’s eligibility for federal aid to the percentage of former students who are repaying principal on their loans three years after leaving school, the department said.

By John Lauerman

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-23/obama-cracks-down-on-for-profit-colleges-links-u-s-student-aid-to-income.html

U.S. to Scrutinize For-Profit Career Colleges

By MELISSA KORN for the Wall Street Journal

The U.S. Department of Education on Friday will propose a measure to penalize for-profit career colleges for graduating students with high debt-to-income ratios.

The proposal, which will undergo a 45-day comment period that is expected to include opposition from industry lobbyists, is an effort to ensure schools are training students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation. It comes at a time when for-profits are under new scrutiny as they capture a growing share of federal student-aid dollars.

"Some proprietary schools have profited and prospered but their students haven't," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. "While career colleges play a vital role in training our work force to be globally competitive, some of them are saddling students with debt they cannot afford in exchange for degrees and certificates they cannot use."

Under the proposal, training programs would be judged on whether former students are repaying the principal on federal loans, and the relationship between total student loan debt and average earnings upon graduation. The recommendation sets up three tiers of eligibility, with those in the middle tier facing enrollment restrictions and debt-to-income disclosure requirements, and the weakest tier losing access to federal student aid for new students.

According to the Education Department, if career colleges made no changes, 5% of all programs would no longer be eligible for federal aid and 55% would be required to warn students about high debt-to-income ratios. Many publicly traded schools derive close to 90% of their revenue from federal aid.

The recommendation, known as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, has been a long time coming, with federal officials and industry representatives meeting for a year to discuss new higher-education regulations. The government put forth its first proposal in late January and the stocks of for-profit colleges have soared and swooned since, propelled by rumors of how programs could gain exemption from the regulation.

The Education Department said that this version is "thoughtful," with income calculations based on actual graduate earnings rather than Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. To give time for program improvement, the agency proposed that the 2012-2013 academic year be the earliest that programs could be found ineligible for federal aid.

The Education Department had released 13 other proposals in June but said it needed more time for this one.

"Some key issues around gainful employment are complicated and we want to get it right," Mr. Duncan said at the time.

The earlier recommendations included proposals on incentive compensation for student recruiters, a clearer definition of a credit hour and a new metrics by which students must show academic progress in order to continue receiving federal aid.

The colleges' programs include training for students to work in the culinary arts, as medical assistants, and in criminal justice.

News: Career College Association Announces NEW Name

The Career College Association (CCA) Board of Directors has approved a motion changing the organization's name to the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU). Over the next few months, CCA will complete the process of changing its name to better represent students, institutions and the sector overall.

"This vote culminates a rigorous, multistep review process," said CCA President Harris N. Miller. "In voting the change, the Board recognizes the evolution of career oriented education from its primarily trade school roots to a multi-dimensional, multi-faceted, multi-modal philosophy of higher education delivery that directly responds to the demands of 21st century students, employers, and the larger economy. The phrase "private sector" is synonymous with innovation in virtually every walk of life, and the public's faith in private sector solutions to solve most of society's biggest challenges will carry over into the realm of higher education too."

The Career College Association (CCA) is a voluntary membership organization of accredited, private postsecondary schools, institutes, colleges and universities that provide career-specific educational programs. CCA has 1,800 members that educate and support over one million students each year for employment in over 200 occupational fields. CCA member institutions provide the full range of higher education programs: master's and doctoral degree programs, two- and four-year associate and baccalaureate degree programs, and short-term certificate and diploma programs.

Source: Career College Association

News: It Appears Reform Is Coming to the For-Profit Education Industry

Reported by: Peter Cohan for dailyfinance.com


A Senate committee will hold hearings on June 24 about the $20 billion in federal student loans that end up going to the for-profit education business. This industry induces many people to take out student loans they won't be able to repay: The students are stuck with the debt, but the money goes directly to the schools, which have been growing in profitably. The industry's revenues are up 26.4% a year, with an average return on equity of 33.5% during the last five years.

The exploitation of people who can't repay the loans is endemic. At the University of Phoenix -- with an enrollment of 400,000, it's the nation's largest for-profit university -- only 18% of students get their degrees in six years. The number drops to 6% at some campuses, and among online students, falls even further to a scant 4%. The many dropouts default on loans "as big as $100,000 for incomplete bachelor's degrees and up to $200,000 for advanced degrees," according to Business Insider.

How Strong is the For-Profit Education Lobby in Washington?

The Department of Education wants to change the regulations governing the for-profit education industry in ways that would seriously crimp that growth and profitability. According to Bloomberg News, those new regulations could be out for comment as soon as next week. Bloomberg reports that these regulations "would cut federal aid to for-profit colleges whose graduates' starting salaries make it difficult to repay their loans as well as tighten rules against tying recruiters' pay to the number of students they enroll."

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hiil, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) will convene hearings on the subject before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that he chairs. "We need to ensure for-profit colleges are working well to meet the needs of students and not just shareholders," Harkin's statement said. "We owe it to students and taxpayers to make sure these dollars are being well-spent."

The for-profit education industry has worked with government officials to gain access to new markets. Bloomberg News reported on Apollo Group (APOL) and its efforts to use campaign contributions to influence New York state to let it open a campus there. Interestingly, that case reveals that the for-profit industry does not always succeed.

It's likely that by July, the nation will have a clearer picture of how Washington plans to change the rules governing for-profit education to a smaller, more slowly-growing business -- one that isn't permitted to thrive by taking on students who have no hope either of graduating or of repaying their student loans.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/cDRoia

For-profit colleges reap big benefit from stimulus

www.ajc.com Reports the following:

"Massage and beauty schools, online universities and other for-profit colleges in Georgia and across the nation are cashing in on federal stimulus spending, collecting $2.2 billion in tuition grants for low-income students, public records show.

That represents nearly a quarter of the stimulus money spent on these grants to date.

The taxpayer-funded grants are flowing to profit-making schools as the government is seeking to revise how those schools qualify for federal aid, partly because of concerns over how some saddle their students with substantial debt. The effort follows a federal report that cited abuses in the recruiting practices of some of the schools. "

Stimulus spending

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $17.1 billion in funding for Pell grants for low-income students. About $9.8 billion has been distributed so far. Here are the top five recipients of that taxpayer money.

1. University of Phoenix, $484.2 million

2. City University of New York Inc., $246.5 million

3. University of Puerto Rico, $98.3 million

4. Inter American University of Puerto Rico, $89.2 million

5. State University of New York, $88.2 million

To View full article please go to: www.ajc.com/news/for-profit-colleges-reap-541761.html

My Thoughts: The effort follows a federal report that cited abuses in the recruiting practices of some of the schools.- Ah yes the unethical tactics used by recruiters. They will lie just to have you sign on that dotted line. Do my eyes deceive me? Is that University of Phoenix at number one? Why am I not surprised?