The Huffington Post has a piece titled “Disgraced For-Profit Colleges Tricked Students, But Government Delays Relief” that should infuriate us all. It is a must read.
There are certain services that are best done by the government and not the private sector. It has been known for some time that the profit motive of private schools are much more dominant than the mission to educate. The numbers speak for themselves. Yet because of the proverbial money in politics, the education fraud of the private sector continues.
It is clear that Corinthian perpetrated a fraud on 85,000 students.
Corinthian Colleges Inc., the defunct for-profit chain of schools, may have duped 85,000 students into enrolling by advertising false job placement rates, the U.S. Department of Education said Tuesday.
The declaration, the result of the department’s review of internal company records and evidence obtained by California Attorney General Kamala Harris, may make it easier for some student debtors who attended Corinthian’s Everest and Wyotech schools in California, or took classes from Everest’s Florida-based online program, to petition the Education Department to cancel their debts. Federal law contains a provision aimed at shielding borrowers from making payments on federal student loans granted on fraudulent conditions.
The Education Department said it found startling discrepancies between what Corinthian reported about former students’ employment and the truth. For example, at the Everest location in West Los Angeles, the school told prospective students of its associate-level paralegal program that 60 percent of former students got jobs in their fields. The actual rate was 0. Harris sued Corinthian in 2013.
But Education Secretary Arne Duncan isn’t automatically discharging defrauded students’ debts, despite pleas from some prominent state and federal officials, including Harris. Instead, the Education Department is requiring defrauded students to complete application forms.
The government created this problem by allowing private colleges to be but sponges for federal education dollars. They should make the defrauded students whole immediately.