“‘We’ve come to expect these unjust assaults,’ said Gene Feichtner, president and chief operating officer of the huge for-profit chain ITT Technical Institute, which has been sued by CFPB, faces fraud charges from SEC and is under investigation by 16 state attorneys general. “

Ah. With each clause, UD’s smile widens.

***************

Very good brief backgrounder here.

****************

The next big change, they say, came in 2006, when Congress passed legislation backed by the Bush administration that erased a requirement that colleges deliver at least half their courses on a campus.
The top regulator on higher education at the Education Department during this time was Sally Stroup, now general counsel for the for-profit’s chief lobbying arm, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities.

“That’s when these guys took off,” said Tom Harkin, a former Democratic senator from Iowa who led a 2012 investigation into the for-profit industry. He said moving everything online made it easier for private investors to snap up failing schools and hide from regulators. Meanwhile, the schools invested heavily in lobbyists and making political connections that guaranteed access to federal student aid would be protected, he said.

“These schools went out and ran wild with government money,” Harkin said.

*****************

A fed’ral official named Stroup
Did the ol’ gov-to-biz loop de loop:
She made our schools trash
And sucked in the cash
But now it is time to regroup.

As our native tax syphons – the for-profit ed scams – are forced to shut down…

… their ex-employees can always find work in Pakistan.

“[N]one of this is unexpected. Rather, we refused to heed the warning signs, especially in the form of disproportionate rates of student loan defaults in the for-profit sector.”

Well. Now that the tax syphons have syphoned up our taxes and subjected a population used to exploitation to yet more exploitation, what’s next? Goldman Sachs has made its money on the for-profit ed scam and will no doubt soon be getting the hell out while the getting’s good. Goldman Sachs stands at the opposite end of the social spectrum from the exploited masses. Goldman Sachs knows what’s what, and is unhampered by morality.

As for the suckers left holding the bag (you, me, and the students of for-profit schools): I’m sure Lloyd Blankfein has a little lecture to give us all on how markets operate.

“[T]he once wildly profitable for-profit education sector is for the birds.”

Good and totally predictable news. But meanwhile a lot of people got hurt (those paying back pointless loans continue to get hurt), and a lot of taxpayers got taken.

Of course the industry continues to take our taxes and put suckers in debt. But it’s definitely, finally, going south.

“Moos said it will take ‘at least two or three years’ before the Cougars might turn a profit again. The Cougars plan to reduce debt during the current fiscal year, Moos said, with the aid of increased income from football season ticket sales, Cougar Athletic Fund donations and the suites and other premium seating areas added to Martin Stadium.”

That was Washington State University’s athletic director, doing a little damage control in 2012. It’s now 2015, and the school lucky enough to hire Mr “lock [his] fucking pussy ass in a place so dark that the only way he knows he has a dick is to reach down and touch it” Mike Leach to coach its football team now has not a 6.6 million dollar athletic program deficit, but … let’s see… how profitable have they become…

Oh. They’ve now got a thirteen million dollar deficit.

But Bill Moos is still at it, promising the suckers at WSU that if they’ll just sit tight for another two or three years…

Moos said all Pac-12 schools will see significant increases in television money …

Just hold on, dammit! Another couple of years! I swear it’ll be zillions from tv!

Well, a little over a million. Maybe.

******************************

But… wait a minute!

“We expected a sizable deficit as we put our numbers together and then we decided to make it even larger to take care of some things that we felt needed to happen…”

You expected? But you told me back in 2012…

For-Profit Education in America: It’s exactly like a sausage.

Bridgepoint Education, a for-profit online school that has been under scrutiny for what Mr. Miller, the Iowa attorney general, called “unconscionable sales practices,” turned to [a lobbying firm] to set up meetings with [Florida Attorney General Pam] Bondi’s staff, to urge her not to join in the inquiries underway in several states. Again, her office decided not to take up the matter, citing the small number of complaints about Bridgepoint it has received.

You do not want to know what goes into it.

“While none of the major predatory for-profit college companies — University of Phoenix, EDMC, Corinthian, Kaplan, CEC, etc. — have a frontman as publicly odious as Donald Trump, their abuses and harms go much deeper than those of Trump University.”

Predatory, odious, our next president, and currently dealing with his namesake university being dragged through the mud, first by the New York Attorney General, and now by a judge:

This week, a judge found Donald Trump liable for operating a get-rich-quick school, the erstwhile Trump University, without a license. The case was originally brought against Trump by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office, which, according to the Daily News, alleged that Trump University had “ripped off 5,000 students nationwide by promising to make them rich when instead they were steered into costly and mostly useless seminars.”

While he’s already been held liable for the university’s operation, Trump will now go to trial to see if he’s also liable for defrauding the students.

Can’t wait for the trial.

The University of Texas: We already make immense millions in profits from athletics…

But it’s always possible to be yet greedier.

“University of Washington administrators say they’re working to eliminate a tuition waiver that has the effect of giving $3 million in tuition revenues to the university’s athletic department, even though the department makes a profit on ticket sales and broadcast contracts.”

Last year, the waiver meant $3.3 million in subsidies went to UW athletics, even though the department made an overall profit of $8.9 million.

Just keep it coming, kiddies. Keep it coming.

“Strong athletics programmes and successful teams are believed to contribute to increased enrolments, better student morale and improved alumni engagement. Yet the reality is that only a few of these athletics departments make a profit and many are heavily subsidised by powerful boosters, the universities and their fee-paying students.”

A review of The Athletic Trap: How College Sports Corrupted the Academy restates the obvious.

“If Slive and the Power 5 get what they want, we’ll move rapidly toward a new world in major college sports. It will be a world where the phony veil of amateurism at the major-college level will finally be yanked away. It will mean a lot of significant changes that could mean athletes at the biggest schools will begin to share a bigger split in the mind-numbing profits that conferences like the SEC enjoy.”

Hell, they’re just shooting themselves in the foot. They do that, and the professional-league coaches, Saban on down, will bolt as their several million dollars a year salaries plummet. Right now, the highest paid public employee in most states is a college coach. That will start to change if you go the Mike Slive route.

“Holding a leadership position at an academic medical center brings considerable influence over research, clinical and educational missions. And when one of these medical center leaders is also charged with providing stewardship for a profit-making business, it represents a substantial conflict of interest.”

On the eve of the Sunshine Act’s introduction, Newsweek revisits the sordid situation at university medical schools in regard to conflict of interest with big pharma. Starting in September, American consumers will have access to information about “all payments and other valuables given by Big Pharma to physicians and teaching hospitals.”

This blog has over the years covered so many greed-crazed COI’ers at so many university medical schools that you’d think UD just copies and pastes everything that shows up on Google News. In fact, she’s extremely selective, posting only about those stories involving arrant – sometimes fatal – disregard of patients, plus immense pharma payouts. She’d link you to a few of these stories right now, but they have a triggering effect on her.

Meanwhile, it’s good to keep in mind that med school COI mischief doesn’t stop with the stuff the Sunshine Act illuminates. Given last year’s bad publicity about George Washington University’s business school (this article, which summarizes events, also features the latest form of fallout), one might forget that in 2009 its med school was also in trouble — both on probation and headed by a

provost and vice president for health affairs, [who] also has received money and stock options for serving on the board of directors of Universal Health Services, which owns the university hospital.

Williams was paid nearly $680,000 in annual compensation by GWU, according to the university’s 2006 tax returns, its most recent, and UHS reported in Securities and Exchange Commission filings that he received compensation from the company that calendar year of $122,000, including stock options.

Because he has a stake in the company’s profitability, some at the school complained that Williams had no incentive to push for spending on new equipment and programs at the school. Others said it was not appropriate for Williams to be paid so well when the tax-exempt school is one of the most expensive in the country.

GWU leaders asked Williams to resign from the corporation board and this month accepted his resignation, effective by the end of the academic year.

Ain’t nuthin the Sunshine Act can do about this popular form of self-enrichment.

“Payers will no longer pay rising prices for marginally improved new products and pharmas must now justify those higher prices by demonstrating substantially greater benefits. That means new drug development requires more time and cost to make the case for improved cost-benefit and, more often than not, the effort fails. As a result the sales revenues for new drugs suffer both initially and over time. Then in their insatiable demand to maintain a profitability that exceeded all other industries over the past thirty years, pharmas have turned to the emerging countries as their golden goose. There local conditions and the inexorable greed of pharma companies combine to produce a way of doing business that is intrinsically corrupt.”

In case you were wondering why pharma is intrinsically corrupt. And will remain so. After all, this writer didn’t even mention pharma’s impressive capacity to make up bogus ailments, frighten the shit out of us about them, and provide pills.

“Calling on Congress: It is time for probing hearings into corruption at the NCAA and the serious misuse of college athletics and college athletes by major educational institutions for their own profit. Haul up Mark Emmert, a passel of college presidents and athletic directors, Shabazz Napier and other current and former athletes who have been exploited by the system, and let the chips fall where they may.”

Sure, laddie.

Listen up.

Until Hillary’s in power, you’ll never rustle up enough guys to do this. President Obama is a major jock, and he sets the tone. Forget it.

And … you know what? Forget it when Hillary takes over too. When that happens, the guys will get even more jockish. In reaction.

For-Profit Online University…

… a grand new American tradition.

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