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.
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 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.
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.