On Friday, prosecutors in Miami charged the politically-connected CEO of for-profit Dade Medical College, Ernesto Perez, with the felony charge of providing false information through a sworn statement, plus two misdemeanor counts of perjury.
PBS broadcast a documentary on for-profit higher education last week, titled College, Inc. It begins with the slightly ridiculous figure of Michael Clifford, a former cocaine abuser turned born-again Christian who never went to college, yet makes a living padding around the lawn of his oceanside home wearing sandals and loose-fitting print shirts, buying up distressed non-profit colleges and turning them into for-profit money machines.
Bridgeport Education (NYSE:BPI) is a holding company that operates for-profit colleges Ashford University and University of the Rockies with both live and online classes. Though the company has seen criticism for its recruiting practices, it remains profitable.
Ballots cast in November will help decide how the federal government confronts the costs of college and what role the private sector plays in higher education.
Education Management Corporation, which enrolls 72,000 students on 72 campuses in 24 states, agreed to sell itself last week to two private equity firms for $3.4-billion, becoming the first publicly traded higher-education company to turn private. The move triggered speculation among analysts that the deal could lead to other takeovers of for-profit colleges.
State agencies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania are reviewing the recruiting or financial-aid practices of two colleges owned by the Career Education Corporation, according to a quarterly report the for-profit higher-education company filed last week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
State agencies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania are reviewing the recruiting or financial-aid practices of two colleges owned by the Career Education Corporation, according to a quarterly report the...
For-profit colleges expand access to higher education for some students who might not otherwise attend college, but the payoff can be meager. In fact, graduates of for-profit colleges' two-year programs earn about the same as those who ...
A U.S. Senate Committee last year castigated the for-profit world of higher education for excesses in recruiting and for too often providing a path to debt and failure rather than opportunity.
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.
Because the media loves discussing Donald Trump, it wasn't surprising to see heavy press coverage of a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman accusing the unlicensed Trump University of "persistent fraudulent, illegal and deceptive conduct." Trump responded by harshly attacking Schneiderman, whose suit demands that Trump pay back at least $40 million to the 5,000 people who were enticed into paying $10,000 to $35,000 for real estate investment courses "that did not deliver on their promises." Trump University's sad broken promises included telling some students they would get a photo-op with the Donald, when all they got was a picture with a cardboard cutout. But the real fraud was convincing enrollees that the Trump-owned for-profit "university" would get them on the path to a successful career, which apparently didn't happen for many of them.
Brazil has the world's 7th largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with a population of around 195 million inhabitants, distributed in 27 states (more than five thousand cities). The country has a peculiar higher education system, with a relatively small number of public research universities and a large number of private institutions, both philanthropic and for-profit. Although the system has been growing substantially in the last 15 years, the number of young people attending the university has not exceeded 14% of the 18-25 age cohort eligible to pursue university level study. Approximately 6 million students attend a higher education institution in Brazil— 75% of these students are enrolled in private institutions (approximately half of them are for-profit institutions).
It is discouraging to see The Chronicle run pieces with errors of commission and omission about the for-profit sector of higher education. The most recent is Joshua Woods's "Opportunity, Ease, Encouragement, and Shame: a Short Course in Pitching For-Profit Education"
Beginning in the 1970s, Apollo Group, Inc. founder, John Sperling, pioneered an unprecedented growth of the for-profit education industry in the United States, from a sleepy group of privately owned trade schools, to today's more behemoth publicly traded operators.
Higher-education companies have seen a mixed bag of spending sprees and lawsuits in the past several weeks, as well as the first public offering in nearly five years.