Another for-profit college bilking its students and the U.S. government

by David Safier

What do you think about the educational ethics of a for-profit college where

recruiters were instructed to use high-pressure sales techniques and inflated claims about career placement to increase student enrollment, regardless of applicants’ qualifications. Recruiters were encouraged to enroll even applicants who were unable to write coherently, who appeared to be under the influence of drugs or who sought to enroll in an online program but had no computer.

Tactics like those are why the Education Management Corporation (150,000 students in 105 schools) has a multibillion-dollar fraud suit filed against it by the Fed DOJ, California, Florida, Illinois and Indiana. EMC is the second largest for-profit college company, behind our own Apollo Group/University of Phoenix, which has had similar problems of its own in the past. Apollo claims it has mended its ways. Time will tell.

It's illegal for a for-profit college to pay recruiters per student they bring in, because that encourages them to lie, cheat and steal to get new students. The bilked students go way into debt over loans to pay for courses they can't benefit from. And the rest of us pay as well, since, at EMC, they get almost 90% of their revenues from federal financial aid. In 2010, that amounted to $2.2 billion.

Here's the topper, in case you need one. EMC is 41% owned by Goldman Sachs.