http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_24041125/profit-colleges-soaking-up-tax-dollars-despite-student......
"Nearly 30 percent of the $1.3 billion in federal Pell grants and student loans that flowed to Bay Area colleges went to for-profit trade schools.".....
"Former students at for-profit schools accounted for nearly half of all federal loan defaults here, in the most recent count, though they make up just about 10 percent of the area's college students. Loan defaults, which have serious credit score consequences, tend to occur when someone earns too little to pay off college debt.".......
"Twelve for-profit schools were among the area's 25 most expensive colleges, as measured by the average annual cost after subtracting tuition grants, and they had that group's highest rates of student loan defaults."....
"But some former students say their schools overpromised the kinds of jobs they would land after earning a degree. More than four years after she graduated from Heald College in Hayward, paying $65,000 for an associate degree in business administration, Rachel Tenorio says she has yet to find a job in the field."......
"But with opportunity and cost comes risk. Within three years of getting their first loan bill, nearly 19 percent of former students from Bay Area for-profit schools defaulted -- compared with about 5 percent of public and private nonprofit university borrowers during the same period, the newspaper's data analysis revealed."........
"In a pending case, nine former WyoTech students who took heating and air-conditioning classes in Fremont claimed in 2008 that they had taken out student loans for as much as $40,000 each, but their training did not make them employable. Instructors sometimes appeared to be drunk, fell asleep in class and could not answer basic questions, and equipment was outdated, according to their suit."......
"In 2007, the company paid $4.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by then Attorney General Jerry Brown claiming it committed fraud, gave falsified records to the state, and ran ads misrepresenting the jobs students would find."