The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, or APSCU, is the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group for America's for-profit colleges. APSCU has opposed a wide range of reasonable efforts by the Obama administration and members of Congress to hold bad actors in its industry accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse with the roughly $32 billion a year in federal tax dollars they receive.
The for-profit college industry is under pressure. Many of its biggest companies are being investigated by federal agencies and state attorneys general for fraud and misrepresentation -- deceiving students, regulators, and investors about job placement rates, costs and quality of programs, transferability of credits, and other matters. Enrollments are down, and share prices have been falling.
The parent company of the University of Phoenix announced Tuesday that it is laying off 500 workers around the country as it faces declining enrollment and transitions to more online-only courses.
A 34,000-student university in Chile affiliated with Laureate Education, Inc. has received notification from the National Accreditation Commission that its institutional accreditation will not be renewed at the end of its current three-year term. The Universidad de las Américas plans to appeal the decision, which -- if it stands – would mean that new students would be ineligible for government loans or grants.
Ernesto Perez has resigned as president and chief executive officer of Dade Medical College, a for-profit institution in Florida, less than a week after prosecutors charged him with perjury and providing false information through a sworn statement, according to reports by The Miami Herald and the South Florida Business Journal.
Aggressive recruiters, toll-free numbers and late-night TV commercials mark some of the tactics used by fraudulent for-profit schools that Attorney General Martha Coakley said her office is investigating.
As we move from a federal budget crisis towards a federal debt crisis, ways to reign in student debt will almost certainly be on the table. The US government spends about $5.5 billion subsidizing student loans each year, depending on who you ask. It's a rather elusive figure. Student debt, more so than other forms of debt, is particularly complicated for many reasons.
For those of you who are not familiar with Corinthian Colleges (COCO), it's a for-profit company that provides post-secondary education services. It's most well known brand is Everest Colleges, but it has other institutions such as WyoTech and Heald College.
Adding to its commitment to the American retail industry as a vital sector of the country's economy, University of Phoenix, one of the nation's largest private universities, and Stein Mart today announced a new scholarship program for employees of the nationwide retailer.
Once the hottest things in higher education, private, for-profit colleges and universities have suddenly found themselves on the business equivalent of academic probation.
Economic stagnation and high youth unemployment in developed countries have contributed to emerging concerns over whether traditional models of higher education are capable of producing employable graduates, the International Finance Corporation's 6th International Private Education Conference heard in San Francisco this month.
IN his 2011 TED talk, Gene Wade thus shared his vision of an ultra low-cost college degree for working adults. As of today, he has raised $42 million in venture capital for his new company, UniversityNow, and its two for-profit universities, Patten and New Charter. The first students started in the spring. Around the same time, Forbes magazine named Mr. Wade the most disruptive figure in education.
Already under constant fire from Capitol Hill Democrats screaming for tighter regulations, the for-profit college sector now has bigger problems on its hands.
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Bridgepoint Education Inc. over the compensation of admissions staff members, the company announced Monday in a corporate filing. The for-profit is also facing a serious accreditation challenge for its Ashford University, which is scrambling to retain regional accreditation.
The University of Phoenix spent the most money on Google Adwords -- roughly $170,000 per day -- in the third quarter of 2012, according to a recent report by Wordstream, an online advertising consulting firm, cited by the Daily Mail. Ask.com, Amazon.com, Zappos.com and Hotels.com came in second, third, fourth and fifth, respectively.
Rosemir Soares always wanted to go to university but could never afford the fees. Then she discovered Prouni, a scholarship program of the Brazilian government that has guaranteed a college education for more than one million low-income students since it began, in 2005.
Although private non-profit colleges and universities have a long and distinguished history throughout the world, what has come to be known as ‘for-profit higher education’ is a relative newcomer.
TAMPA, Fla. -- For-profit colleges are booming. But a new fight between these upstarts and the education establishment raises a key question: How much are degrees from for-profits really worth?
A watchdog official at the U.S. Education Department last week urged lawmakers to "go slowly" on proposed legislation that would relax some rules that for-profit colleges must follow to participate in federal student-aid programs.