I'm a Washington DC lawyer and policy advocate, and I spend a couple days a week trying to expose and end the abuses of a particularly bad industry: predatory for-profit colleges. I am regularly contacted by industry employees who no longer can live with being part of an immoral enterprise:
• The marketer at a Utah "lead generation" company who is assigned to placing fake ads for non-existent jobs on the Internet, aimed at luring unemployed people to provide their contact information.
• The telephone rep at a Florida call center, who grabs the leads that were generated, and tries to deceive these people - low-income single parents, veterans, and others struggling to get ahead - into buying high-priced, low-quality career training programs, many conducted entirely online.
• The California college librarian, heartbroken because her school has admitted to its $80,000 criminal justice a program a mentally challenged man who reads on a third grade level and believes he is training to become a police officer.
These employees talk to me about feeling ashamed, degraded, disgusted with what they're doing.
Yet their ultimate bosses, the CEOs of the big predatory for-profit colleges, seem to have no such shame. Nor do the many power brokers and celebrities, from Suze Orman to Colin Powell, Trent Lott to Dick Gephardt, Marc Morial to Mitt Romney, who have been hired, one way or another, to endorse and defend bad actors in this industry. Nor do the many graduates of Harvard Law and other premier institutions who get rich as executives and advisers with predatory for-profit colleges.
When you leave Harvard, you will have a world of opportunity. The question posed for you by the story of for-profit colleges is whether you want to be paid to shield the privileged even when they engage in blatant abuses, or whether you want to use your talents and creativity to help build a stronger, more just, more innovative, and more productive society that benefits everyone.
A for-profit college is a college that's owned by a profit-making business, as opposed to the more traditional model of a college operated by a state or by as a non-profit. Most for-profit colleges focus on training students for careers, in fields from information technology to health care to auto repair. There's a strong need for such training programs, and there's nothing wrong in theory with the idea of having businesses run them, but in practice it has created a big problem for students and taxpayers.
Many for-profit colleges get about 90 percent of their revenue from federal government grants and loans provided to help students get an education. These businesses hire lobbyists to loosen the government's rules for getting such aid. They also spend heavily on campaign contributions that have helped buy the allegiance of almost all the Republicans in Congress, and many of the Democrats as well.
As a result, the rules are very weak, and for-profit colleges can maximize their profits by ripping off students - using deceptive advertising and coercive recruiting, charging very high prices, and spending far too little on teaching and helping students build careers. The victims of these abuses have seen their financial futures ruined by overwhelming student loan debts reaching over $100,000 in some cases.
Some for-profit colleges are honest and do a good job educating students, and there are good teachers and students at even some of the worst schools. But overall, the industry is hurting people and our economy, while making a small group of owners rich enough to buy their own yachts, private planes, and mega-mansions. For-profit colleges have obtained as much as $32 billion a year from federal aid, and their lobbyists work every day to keep that money flowing.
For-profit colleges, like other kinds of colleges, are eligible to receive federal student grants and direct loans -- if they receive approval from organizations called accreditors. Many accreditors apply fairly low standards. Some for-profit colleges, such as some local strip-mall beauty schools or the infamous Donald Trump University, still don't bother to get accredited, and thus students are not eligible for federal aid. Most for-profit colleges do get federal aid, but many of their students need more aid than that to pay the high tuition costs. So for-profit colleges steer many students into non-federal private loans that come with very high interest rates that can reach 15 percent or more, as compared with 3.8 percent for federal loans.
Read more: What Law Students (And Everyone) Should Know About For-Profit Colleges
• The marketer at a Utah "lead generation" company who is assigned to placing fake ads for non-existent jobs on the Internet, aimed at luring unemployed people to provide their contact information.
• The telephone rep at a Florida call center, who grabs the leads that were generated, and tries to deceive these people - low-income single parents, veterans, and others struggling to get ahead - into buying high-priced, low-quality career training programs, many conducted entirely online.
• The California college librarian, heartbroken because her school has admitted to its $80,000 criminal justice a program a mentally challenged man who reads on a third grade level and believes he is training to become a police officer.
These employees talk to me about feeling ashamed, degraded, disgusted with what they're doing.
Yet their ultimate bosses, the CEOs of the big predatory for-profit colleges, seem to have no such shame. Nor do the many power brokers and celebrities, from Suze Orman to Colin Powell, Trent Lott to Dick Gephardt, Marc Morial to Mitt Romney, who have been hired, one way or another, to endorse and defend bad actors in this industry. Nor do the many graduates of Harvard Law and other premier institutions who get rich as executives and advisers with predatory for-profit colleges.
When you leave Harvard, you will have a world of opportunity. The question posed for you by the story of for-profit colleges is whether you want to be paid to shield the privileged even when they engage in blatant abuses, or whether you want to use your talents and creativity to help build a stronger, more just, more innovative, and more productive society that benefits everyone.
A for-profit college is a college that's owned by a profit-making business, as opposed to the more traditional model of a college operated by a state or by as a non-profit. Most for-profit colleges focus on training students for careers, in fields from information technology to health care to auto repair. There's a strong need for such training programs, and there's nothing wrong in theory with the idea of having businesses run them, but in practice it has created a big problem for students and taxpayers.
Many for-profit colleges get about 90 percent of their revenue from federal government grants and loans provided to help students get an education. These businesses hire lobbyists to loosen the government's rules for getting such aid. They also spend heavily on campaign contributions that have helped buy the allegiance of almost all the Republicans in Congress, and many of the Democrats as well.
As a result, the rules are very weak, and for-profit colleges can maximize their profits by ripping off students - using deceptive advertising and coercive recruiting, charging very high prices, and spending far too little on teaching and helping students build careers. The victims of these abuses have seen their financial futures ruined by overwhelming student loan debts reaching over $100,000 in some cases.
Some for-profit colleges are honest and do a good job educating students, and there are good teachers and students at even some of the worst schools. But overall, the industry is hurting people and our economy, while making a small group of owners rich enough to buy their own yachts, private planes, and mega-mansions. For-profit colleges have obtained as much as $32 billion a year from federal aid, and their lobbyists work every day to keep that money flowing.
For-profit colleges, like other kinds of colleges, are eligible to receive federal student grants and direct loans -- if they receive approval from organizations called accreditors. Many accreditors apply fairly low standards. Some for-profit colleges, such as some local strip-mall beauty schools or the infamous Donald Trump University, still don't bother to get accredited, and thus students are not eligible for federal aid. Most for-profit colleges do get federal aid, but many of their students need more aid than that to pay the high tuition costs. So for-profit colleges steer many students into non-federal private loans that come with very high interest rates that can reach 15 percent or more, as compared with 3.8 percent for federal loans.
Read more: What Law Students (And Everyone) Should Know About For-Profit Colleges