The lobbying group of for-profit colleges, APSCU, today released a report, “Best Practices in Recruitment and Admissions.” State and federal authorities, and private lawyers, have been investigating for-profit colleges, and winning settlements, arbitrations, and jury verdicts in cases where recruiters used coercive tactics and made false promises to prospective students about college costs, job placement rates,
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The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, or APSCU, is the Washington, DC-based lobbying group for America’s for-profit colleges. APSCU has opposed a wide range of reasonable efforts by the Obama Administration and Members of Congress to hold bad actors in its industry accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse with the roughly $32 billion
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After several years of startling revelations about its predatory abuses of students, the for-profit college industry faces growing skepticism from the public. Thousands of students across the country have complained that they were deceived by for-profit college recruiters about the cost of programs, the quality of programs, and the value of  for-profit degrees in the
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The main trade association of for-profit colleges, APSCU, seems to exist for the purpose of protecting the worst, most abusive, most predatory conduct by its member companies. Why else would the association, once again last week, attack the U.S. Department of Education for seeking to implement a law that simply requires career colleges that receive
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Last year, the annual convention of owners and executives of for-profit colleges (University of Phoenix, The Art Institutes, Kaplan, etc.), held in Las Vegas, featured paid speakers George W. Bush and Michelle Rhee, and, for entertainment, a fake knockoff version of Creedence Clearwater Revival. After a year in which the truth about their shoddy practices finally sent
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Last year, President Obama warned our military servicemembers that some for-profit colleges “aren’t interested in helping you…. They are interested in getting the money.” He called the schools’ conduct “disgraceful” and told the troops that these schools are “trying to swindle and hoodwink you.”  Holly Petraeus, who directs service member affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection
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Several years of public scrutiny have exposed that many of America’s for-profit colleges are playing a cruel joke on students and taxpayers — high-priced, low-quality programs, sold through deceptive recruiting practices, that often leave students without good jobs and deep in debt. This scam has cost taxpayers as much as $33 billion in a single year. Worse, it
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In the past two years, as the public has come to recognize that many for-profit colleges have been ripping off taxpayers and ruining students’ lives, enrollments have declined, and the once-mighty industry has gone into a tailspin. A number of schools, such as American Career Institute and ATI have abruptly shut down many or all of their campuses,
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