""I speak with people, for example, who work at boiler room call centers for for-profit colleges and the lead generation companies that provide the industry with many of its students. Recently I've been learning more about one particularly offensive trick the industry uses. Multiple companies maintain fake websites promising jobs, food stamps, heating assistance. But these are just fronts to draw in people -- mostly low income people -- so they can be sold for-profit college programs. Before they can proceed on these sites, people come to a popup window asking for their contact information, and next thing someone is calling and trying to steer them to a for-profit college. According to people who have worked inside the lead generation industry, this particular bait and switch scam steers students to schools operated by Kaplan, ITT, Corinthian, Bridgepoint, the University of Phoenix, Career Education Corp., EDMC, and others. It's an awful scam, and I plan to report more on it soon.".....http://www.huffingtonpost.com/davidhalperin/as-for-profit-colleges-fi_b_6031046.html
20 replies (most recent on top)
@377, I have heard the term full blown racist, but never really understood it. Is it like a biracial person who hates both sides both races of origin? Or a white person who hates black people? Or a black person who hates white people? Or a hispanic person who hates white people? Or an aboriginal person who hates white australians? Or a white australian who hates aboriginal people? The permutations are infinite. You should really either master the english language or shut up.
Go get 'em Kid.
Camden Kid is a full blown racist. No doubt about it
Go get em, Kid
"It has been alleged recently that high school drop outs make more money than people who have been trained at a for-profit college." Bill Gates dropped out of college.
It has been alleged recently that high school drop outs make more money than people who have been trained at a for-profit college. Somehow the for-profit sector has the divine ability to DECREASE a persons value to society. And people are buying this crap. Wake up people. You like to think that these schools can brainwash these poor vulnerable victims who haven't the brain capacity to decide if they want to take on a 20,000 debt. You need to spend a little time thinking about how you, yourselves, are being manipulated into thinking a certain way. If people aren't getting jobs, maybe it's because there aren't enough jobs to go around....duh
Too many people assume that CCi is hunting people down and brainwashing them into taking classes. Even if CCi specializes in targeting low income people, are low income people so inept as to not be able to make choices for themselves? I agree the for-profit sector needs some cleaning up, but they are not the anti-christ incarnate. The "predatory" spin word is quite popular, people seem to forget that America is full of predatory lending, in fact it's considered business as usual in many parts of the world, except for CCi, who we seem shocked to discover, hasn't behaved like the perfect saint in the middle of it all.
"What do you think they multi-million dollar salaries are for football and basketball coaches." Maybe it's a result of the millions that are donated by the alum? In some cases, hundreds of millions are donated by one person. Take note of David Booth's $300 million donation to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. CCi's financial problems could be solved very quickly if just one medical assistant decided to donate $100 million or more.
Traditional colleges recruit like crazy. The travel to schools, they attempt to recruit high performing students and they advertise. What do you think they multi-million dollar salaries are for football and basketball coaches. The performance of those teams are advertisement.
In addition, colleges do not admit and finance poor students. They provide them grants and scholarships to offset the default.
@Anonymous45317, yes many schools have recruiters. But "recruiting" at many for-profits is a euphemism for preying upon vulnerable targets: people of color, single mothers, veterans, immigrants, people with disabilities, people who are unemployed or underemployed. Remember the email memo that California AG Kamala Harris received? That was akin to the Grandma Millie tapes that Enron had.
319 - are you referring to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc...Those are absolutely highly selective schools and not everyone gets in to them. that being said, you are correct, more applicants than openings. We still need trade workers, in various fields, so technical school students typically do not have the same skill sets. I don't know what you do for a living, but if you were a lawyer, you probably wouldn't know the first thing about being a medical assistant, with the inverse being true as well. 329 is correct that all schools do marketing and recruiting, albeit in different ways and to different populations.
319 - "Highly selective colleges", whomever that may encompass, do plenty of advertising(recruiting), with several outspending any "for-profit" out there, just in a different way. A straw man argument to say the least.
322- Highly selective colleges have far more applicants than the numbers of students to be admitted.
319 - real colleges don't recruit? Please explain!
319: The price of admission undoubtedly reflects that. I wonder if they guarantee jobs like CCi is expected to, or if they leave that up to the student.
The CCI culture is so toxic and polluted with sales goons that they aren't even aware that real colleges don't recruit. They gatekeep. Attention goons: some colleges have more applicants than they have available openings. Did you know that?
317- Not at highly selective schools.
Camden Kid: your use of low level phrases designed to create a negative picture is journalism at its worst. Every college has admissions reps whose job is to recruit students not just for profits.
Scoop- Part of today's problems are a result of the financial collapse, so all the reporting of 6 or 7 years ago went largely ignored. Once the displaced workers couldn't replace their $100k loan originator jobs with $100k Medical Assistant jobs, the true value of the education became obvious.
It's a shame. If Halperin had reported about these redirecting ads, say, 6 or 7 years ago, when the rest of the world knew about it, think of how many more could have been saved!
Damn Camden, cannot you look down a few posts?