Good Article on Scams by For-Profit Colleges

[JPZenger]

Excerpts from April 24, 2005 Allentown PA. Morning Call

Full text:
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1_5lvcapr24,0,1644133.story

"School's pursuit of profit leaves students behind.
... uses hard-sell admission tactics that lead to crusing debt, unfulfilled dreams, some say.

Many students of Lehigh Valley College, which changed its name from Allentown Business School this year, say they get hooked by slick sales pitches. Once enrolled, some find reason to doubt the promise of access to jobs and careers. By then, transferring to another school is rarely an option; LVC's credits are no good at most colleges.

Some graduates find themselves either unemployed or in low-paying jobs with little relation to their fields of study. They are overwhelmed by their student loan debt. Such is the product of an academic institution obsessed with money, according to former LVC faculty. Instructors complain of pressure from administrators to go easy on poor-performing students so they'll stay in school and continue paying tuition.

The college's expensive tuition leads to massive debt. LVC is five to seven times as expensive as local community colleges that offer comparable degrees. The college's fixation with the bottom line compromises academic standards, according to students and instructors, who say the school turns a blind eye to failure and cheating. The college's job placement services fall short of its sales pitch."

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This article also describes how the owner of a chain of for-profit colleges was shut down in the early 1990s by the Federal government for playing games with Federal funding. He then started a new corporation to own another chain of for-profit colleges, including LVC.

[applegrove]

1. My recent experience with a for profit college was that on registration

day they had a busload of heavy-handed sales types in cubicles pretending to be registrars. They knew nothing about the courses they were selling. It was just the hard sell to get the cash right then and there.

Unbelievable considering the average age of an applicant was 19 and they were getting people to sign on the dotted line.

This is just going to be one of those bad experiments - this 'for-profit' schools thing. So sorry we have to go through another 'Utopian fad'. What a waste of resources.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Their racket is to get naive students to take out student loans

with the alleged prospect of a high-paying job at the end. When no job materializes, the student is left with a huge debt.