Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has broadened her investigation into recruiting and lending practices at for-profit colleges and trade schools, which critics say leave students with mountains of student loan debt, but often do not lead to decent-paying jobs.
Last year, leading lights in for-profit and nonprofit higher education convened in Washington for a conference on private-sector innovation in the industry. The national conversation about dysfunction and disruption in higher education was just heating up, and panelists from start-ups, banking, government, and education waxed enthusiastic about the ways that a traditional college education could be torn down and rebuilt—and about how lots of money could be made along the way.
China's National People's Congress approved a new law in December 2002 that promotes Chinese private education development, including at the higher education level. It gives private institutions privileges and favorable policies enjoyed by their public counterparts, including tax and other financial benefits.
With Congress poised to take up legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act this week, proprietary institutions are lobbying furiously against a provision that could put hundreds of for-profit colleges out of business.
Data released by the Department of Education today show that while the official loan-default rate for students of for-profit colleges who entered repayment in 2008 was 11.6 percent, the rate would be more than double that, or 25 percent, under a stricter measurement standard that begins to take effect next year.
Digital-Vending Services International, a company linked to a nonprofit educational group with ties to the U.S. military, has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against three for-profit online higher-education institutions.
The rapid growth of for-profit colleges over the past decade has been aided by billion-dollar ad campaigns on daytime television, the Internet and highway billboards across the country.
Stanley H. Kaplan started his tutoring business in the basement of his parents’ Brooklyn home in 1938. As standardized tests became a bigger fixture of American education, his company became a national operation, preparing millions of students for the SAT, LSAT, MCATs and other tests.
For-profit college representatives are fighting in federal court for the right to avoid telling students if they are likely to afford their debts after attending school.
Most of the growth in private institution enrollment between 2000 and 2010 occurred among for-profit institutions—their enrollment increased more than 300 percent, from 0.4 to 1.7 million students. Enrollment at private nonprofit institutions increased by 20 percent, from 2.2 to 2.7 million students.
Keri Trimble, a 33-year-old employee at a utility call center, was shopping for an online college so she could take classes at night and on weekends. Trimble rejected Apollo Group Inc. (APOL)’s University of Phoenix, the dominant player in the market for selling Internet degrees to working adults. Instead, she chose Arizona State University’s program, which typically charges almost 30 percent less.
A class-action lawsuit filed against ITT Educational Services last month accuses the company of issuing "materially false and misleading" quarterly reports that defrauded investors.
About one-quarter of students who took out federal loans to attend for-profit colleges defaulted within three years of starting repayment, according to a new federal analysis.
For-profit colleges training security guards, medical assistants and law enforcement officers risk losing federal money because they leave students with debts they struggle to repay, the U.S. Education Department said.
For-profit higher education is a large, complex system of institutions, and its explosive growth over the last decade has made it a prominent force in shaping higher-education policy and practice. The for-profit educational sector is composed of a diverse set of colleges, but most of the literature neatly ignores this.
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.