A Department of Education policy advisor said the closure was long overdue. In the past year or so, I’ve heard about these ‘diploma mills’ advertising that graduates were well-positioned for employment. I’ve also heard that their job-placement statistics are pretty crappy, and that the rules federal student loans, where these institutions receive most of their income, require that graduates have a good chance of employment. I’ve always thought these ‘As Seen On TV’ colleges were a scam.
Apparently their staff was a wee bit sub-par. Here’s what one commenter said:
Is anyone surprised? You really shouldn’t trust a college you learned about from an advertisement on daytime TV between spots for ambulance-chaser lawyers and GOLD-BOND medicated powder.
Little Rock local news is covering the story. They’re reporting IT Tech Students here have little chance of transferring credits. They are being told to contact Dept Ed regarding their loans.
It’s a mess that’s fucking over a lot of innocent people. Especially if they get stuck with these loans and no training.
Little Rock’s school opened in 1994. I drive by it several times a week.
Here is what our local news is reporting…
Two of the biggest problems these current students will have to tackle is transferring their credit hours, which will be difficult according to the experts. The other issue is financial aid and the money spent by students; they’ll have to see if they qualify for a closed school loan discharge through the U.S. Department of Education.
According to this article on NPR, students are being given the option of either having their loans forgiven or their credits transferred, but not both. So they’re not completely fucked.
We need good technical colleges. It’s very difficult to find skilled workers anymore.
It’s a shame this school had so many problems with teacher staffing and financial aid counseling.
As usual it comes down to management. Good teachers can be hired if they are paid a competitive wage and treated well.
Too many of these private schools think the students are their personal gold mine. They don’t put enough money into staffing and educational resources.
I’ve never understood what the attraction is of schools like this. Your local community college is MUCH cheaper, has many more options, and the degree is actually respected. Why would anyone chose to pay $20,000 for a degree from ITT (in let’s say, computer aided drafting), when one can get a better degree from Whatever Community College for $4,000?
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of crooks.
Your local community college also requires actual academic work of reasonable quality and a college-level standard of literacy.
Not that I like to go victim-blaming, but when your CC advisor says you need a year of remedial classes before you can even begin your two-year AA degree, and ITT says you can be a certified VCR repairman in seven months, and just sign here for your student loan, which might you choose?
is university of phoenix just as bad? because on the msn reprint comments section a lot of people said they should be next … I thought they were non profit tho
University of Phoenix is pretty bad, though maybe not quite as bad. Their enrollment has plunged about 75% over the past four years and they were purchased by a private equity firm. Whether they’ll manage to claw their way out of a death spiral remains to be seen.
Becaues college/university is not the place to teach those skills, and trade schools have been sneered into virtual nonexistence since the GI Bill came into effect.
Nope, can’t do electronics bench work without an overpriced, undercooked EE.
Just make sure the local CC you’re in (or in its district area, in my case) doesn’t have financial problems and scandals of its own. I’m in College Of DuPage’s district 502 (barely- I’m in Cook County, but within the zone), and the CC has had various issues with spending and credibility- ironically, this occurring after I left college.
Not sure if that is a factor though, but just a thought.
I went to West L.A. Community College back in the day. I remember that the teacher of U.S. History made an announcement the first class that ‘This is college, not high school. You will be expected to do college-level work.’ This was met with consternation from the rest of the class. (This teacher liked to give extra credit to the first person who could answer a trivia question. I was the only person who could answer his first question, ‘What is the first line of Moby Dick?’, and the second one, which was to recite the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. He stopped calling on me after that.)
Mrs. L.A. taught CMA classes at Charter College. She had no sympathy for students who believed that since they’re paying a lot of money for classes, they shouldn’t have to do any work. She flunked a few of them. She insisted they learn the subject, and be ready to actually work as competent CMAs upon graduation. She runs into some of her former students in her job as a home health nurse.
It’s rough for the students. There was a guy who posted on the DEO website yesterday who had been about to graduate from another for-profit university when it was shut down, and is now unable to graduate from ITT with one semester left. But they made their beds, and frankly this sort of oversight is way past due. I do hope they start prosecuting some of the people in charges of recruiting for diploma mills, though.
That’s not quite right. Students whose credits transfer and choose to transfer them are not eligible for loan discharges (because, at least in theory, they received something of value). Students who do not transfer credits are eligible for a full discharge. The problem is that very few students will be able to transfer their credits, because would you accept credits from ITT Tech at your school?
I think something like this is way overdue for the InfiLaw schools (though I know some very competent attorneys who graduated from one of them).