I work for the company more the ten years plus. I have to say hearing things my sister schools done so ashame. That me be clear not aware of things outside my school. This was eye open at times.
I always play by the rules from question policy and practice from upper manangement to co-workers. If anyone know me always care about the prospect see and put in our school. If feel prospect not good fit for company would not enroll them. Some of you question that did my very best let them know. Some cases maybe should take some classes some where else before ours. Take some math classes, english etc. Some case cost. I had family went through our schools and working. I also went through to get my degree. That what proud of as well with most of co-workers.
The part ashame work for the same company has school never see.what just read. I know some of you work at the school believe and follow rules but still shock me the ones not. So once again not all of done this but has effect me in many ways. It makes people think part of this unfair pratice. I hope if we get bought or not the schools get fix. It has been sad morning for me believing in something and find out some bad parts. I really can't wait until all of this is over so don't read anymore bad stuff.
Once-mighty Corinthian Colleges chain is at the end of its run
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Accused of misleading students and falsifying records, one of Florida’s — and the nation’s — largest private, for-profit college chains is being forced to sell campuses or close its doors.
The entrance to Everest University's campus in Pompano Beach, which - like all other campuses - is still allowed to recruit students. MICHAEL VASQUEZ / MIAMI HERALD STAFF
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By Michael Vasquez
mrvasquez@MiamiHerald.com
When Marcela Cash visited the Pompano Beach campus of Everest University recently, the for-profit school wooed the Fort Lauderdale woman with promises of a good new job as a medical assistant. School reps touted their job placement department, and the program’s internship opportunities.
Cash signed up. She didn’t know that the school has been accused of inflating its job placement rates, and is in a state of financial crisis. A day earlier, Everest’s parent company, Corinthian Colleges, had announced that the whole corporation — 100-plus campuses in 26 states and Canada — might implode.
“They did not mention it,” Cash said. Informed of the widespread reports about Corinthians’ wobbly state of affairs, she immediately withdrew, and said she never would have signed up in the first place had she known.
“I would have said, ‘Thank you so much, but this really doesn’t interest me,’ ” she said.
Corinthian, which operates 10 Florida campuses and bases its online operations out of Tampa, is nearing the end. It’s currently under investigation by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Attorneys general in California and Massachusetts have filed lawsuits. U.S. Department of Education documents, meanwhile, say Corinthian “has admitted to falsifying placement rates and/or grade and attendance records at various institutions.”
The company, once a star player in the for-profit college sphere, denies the allegations. It also denies that it admitted to what the U.S. Department of Education says it admitted to.
But the suspicion surrounding job placement rates led federal education officials to request certain documentation earlier this year. Five months passed and Corinthian still hadn’t supplied the required proof, and so the government recently placed the for-profit chain on a “heightened” cash monitoring status. That creates delays when the government makes its financial aid payments, and those payments are the company’s lifeblood.
Corinthian receives $1.4 billion in Pell grants and federal student loans each year, which represents 85 percent of total revenues.
Faced with a slowdown in those dollars, Corinthian announced it might close, and the federal government then swooped in last week with a $16 million life preserver — in the form of accelerated financial aid payments. The move was unprecedented, and some have likened it to a bank-style bailout.
Department of Education officials said they were acting to “prevent suddenly disrupting the education of 72,000 students and the jobs of 12,000 employees.”
“Students and their interests have been at the heart of every decision the Department has made regarding Corinthian,” U.S. Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell said in a statement. The cash infusion requires Corinthian to come up with a six-month plan for either selling its campuses to new owners or winding down its operations.
POLITICAL INFLUENCE
Among for-profit schools, Corinthian is hardly alone in being heavily dependent on federal student aid for its survival. To preserve that relationship, the industry spends heavily on political influence, cultivating lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. In the past two and a half years, Corinthian has spent more than $2 million lobbying Washington, according to the watchdog website opensecrets.org.
For-profits colleges, like banks, have been criticized at times for predatory business practices. In the realm of banking, it was deceptively packaged subprime mortgages that swindled homebuyers; with for-profit colleges, it’s students who complain they are misled by overly aggressive recruiters, and left with a mountain of debt but few job prospects.
In the past decade, for-profit colleges have grown tremendously, and that’s particularly true in Florida, where nearly one in five college students now attend a for-profit school. Florida’s Legislature has strongly encouraged the for-profits’ growth.
Florida’s community colleges, which are some of the best in the nation, often offer similar programs at a far lower price. For example, Everest’s Pompano Beach location charges about $15,000 in tuition for a medical assisting diploma; at Broward College, the same program costs $1,698 for in-state students.
With Corinthian, the allegation of inflating job placement numbers strikes at the whole purpose of for-profit schools, which specialize in shorter academic programs that end in either a certificate or associates degree. The students who enter a for-profit college campus are often poor, and in many cases single parents. Their motivation is to improve their family’s economic lot by getting a better job.
Internal Corinthian documents, cited in the California attorney general lawsuit, show the company describing its students as “isolated” individuals with “low self-esteem” who have “few people in their lives who care about them.”
The California lawsuit states “the placement rates published by (Corinthian) are at times as high as 100 percent, leading prospective students to believe that if they graduate they will get a job. These placement rates are false and not supported by the data. In some cases there is no evidence that a single student in a program obtained a job during the time frame specified in the disclosures.”
In some instances, the suit says, Corinthian paid temp agencies to give its graduates short-lived jobs — so it could inflate the job placement numbers, and maintain the accreditation required to receive federal aid. The suit cites an internal company e-mail from 2011, sent by Corinthian CEO Jack Massimino, which includes a presentation stating “we have a placement compliance problem now.”
Massimino earns about $3 million a year, according to Forbes.
While the Florida attorney general investigation of Everest is pending, the 100-plus pages of complaints that Florida has received are public record. Among them:
• An Orlando woman who, after taking on heavy debt at Everest, had to attend a community college anyway to get a properly accredited degree.
• A Winter Haven woman who is in loan default and having her paychecks garnished. “I was told by admissions that the college was accredited ‘just as Harvard is’ … employers will not accept this degree.”
• A student who was admitted into a health program despite a criminal record — and who now realizes that record makes her unemployable in her field.
• A single father of two who is struggling with his loan debt — 18 years after attending a Corinthian school.
• A disabled Iraq War veteran from Hialeah who complains of unfairly being denied graduation. “I am tired of for-profit schools taking advantage of us.”
• A medical billing and coding graduate who is currently delivering pizzas because doctors “are not hiring Everest graduates.”
• A former program director at Everest’s Brandon campus, who says “the practice of forging or changing and ‘creating’ student documents was prevalent on the campus in which I was