Thread regarding Education Management Corporation layoffs

I third the ADCOM experience. It was strange how a student with a D in English could craft a well written essay in a short amount of time. Who was writing that essay? Hmmm

I can second the AdCom experiences of 10064 and others, here. I was an instructor/reader on the committee off and on for the 11 years I taught at one of the Calif. campuses. My rough average was about 50% of the essays I read were n/a (not acceptable). Usually they would go back to Admissions, where they would be re-written and resubmitted. Since I taught Foundations I also saw, firsthand, how many of those n/a applicants would turn out. Predictably, their success rate was very, very low. If the Art Institutes are to salvage anything of their brand they must change their world-view from one of an over-emphasis on growth and profit back to education. Unfortunately, the people at the top are stuck between the demand for growth and the often exclusive demands made by servicing a quality education. In that battle, growth will always win. Maybe now that the stock is virtually worthless and most of the asset value of the company is gone, there will be a re-commitment to the core mission of the company. Hopefully there is still time. By the way, I still stay in touch with many of my former students. Many of them are talented, deserving people who are disproportionately struggling to pay off their educational loans for an education that has ended up not delivering on the promises that were implied when they started. It hurts my heart that I was a part of that for so long.

Having been one of several involved in the AdCom process I can validate the claim of incompetent people admitting incompetent students.Many times rejections were overridden by deans and others to have people admitted. Some students were even attending and no AdCom had been submitted. Curious?? As far as materials to be submitted in said AdCom was a written page explaining why the student should be considered for entry. Most of the applicants wrote very good copy. The only problem was they were written by someone else as the students transcripts showed failing grades in ALL english and writing sections. Once again Curious?? The result of this policy was that students were not prepared to be at Ai due to poor study habits and were failing terribly. The final results showed classes failed or dropped by all of the aforementioned students.

Yep. Cream of the crop students. Didn't matter just as long as they would qualify for Federal tax dollars to go into the mgmt's pockets. ::CHA CHING::

They brought in students that could not spell their own names and definitely could not read. I had 1 student that didn't know what country he was born in to fill out enrollment paperwork when I told him to put USA he asked me what does that mean.

Actually, many of the instructions did not like that fact. Many of us even got together and tried to change that by requiring a portfolio before admission. But our efforts failed with great push back from EDMC management, AI campus Presidents, Deans and marketing people. Their excuse was Ai was there for all the students that could not make it into the other schools (i.e., we dont care, more students=more profit). For those of you not familiar with REAL art schools, they look for talent above all else. You cannot get into a real art school without a portfolio. Even then, they reject about 50% because they want raw talent that can be polished into something great. Just like a Harvard or Yale only want straight A students. No, EDMC always went to the bottom of the barrel. Scamming Vets, foreign students, and some older adults re-entering the workforce into thinking its just like a trade school but better. We will make you a graphic artist/fashion designer/ game designer then the world is your oyster...WRONG! In the real world, creative jobs were and still are hard to come by even for the cream of crop. Flooding the market with tens of thousands of low to mediocre creative types just made it all worse. Not a surprise most Ai grads end up working in retail or asking "would you like fries with that"

Wells Fargo chimed in with advice? HA, HA, they just got sued by the City of Los Angeles for Fraud. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/5/los-angeles-sues-wells-fargo-over-alleged-fraud-by-employees.html

They certainly did not worry about talent. Just whether or not they got the federal aid.

To be fair, the article quotes an outsider, an analyst at Wells Fargo. No one at EDMC ever worried about recruiting "the most talented applicants who stand the best chance of earning a decent wage."

And the way for hoarders to get a better sales price on their house foreclosure is to stop collecting trash and clean it up nice and tidy. Good luck with that. EDMC has the same mental illness.