Some Serious Dangers of For-Profit Education Schools (Colleges) For Poor and Naive Students

A US based academic sent me the following recent article link, “I feel like I was set up to fail”: Inside a for-profit college nightmare, http://www.salon.com/2014/01/25/inside_story_of_a_for_profit_college_nightmare/.

I think the article highlights some serious dangers that for-profit education schools/colleges/systems have, especially for poor and naive students. While I am not saying that for-profit education systems should not be considered at all in India, I would like to humbly suggest to those who deal with education policy making to please go through the article (unless they have already done so) and put in appropriate safeguards in education policy to prevent such nightmarish scenarios for students in any for-profit education system in India.

Here are some points about the article:

• The student (Jaqueta Cherry) seems to have been targeted and lured by the for-profit college by a promise of landing "a professional job working in computers".
• She dropped out of the courses and now is saddled with thousands of dollars of federal student loan debt.
• "For-profit schools use a business model that feasts on federal student aid." [Note: In the US, the term schools is many times used to refer to higher education colleges and universities too, which seems to be the case here.]
• Leads i.e. info. about prospective students are sold by some firms specializing in "lead generation" which uses sophisticated techniques and algorithms to identify prospects from digital footprints on the Internet.
• Very significant component of revenue of most for-profit schools come from US government aid.
• California Attorney General Kamala Harris has filed a lawsuit against Corinthian Colleges Inc. (parent company of the university Jacqueta had enrolled in). From http://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press_releases/Complaint,%20filed%20stamped_0.pdf, (a 37 page document):

• "CCI is selling these expensive programs to students throughout California, many of whom head single parent families and have annual incomes that are near the federal poverty line ($19,530 for a three-person household). CCI targets this demographic, which it describes in internal company documents as composed of "isolated," "impatient," individuals with ''low selfesteem," who have "few people in their lives who care about them" and who are "stuck" and "unable to see and plan well for future," through aggressive and persistent internet and telemarketing campaigns and through television ads on daytime shows like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich."

• The lawsuit attempts to hold "CCI accountable for violating California law by misrepresenting job placement rates to students, misrepresenting job placement rates to investors, advertising for programs that it does not offer, ...".

A previous blog post, For-profit college in California, USA, faces lawsuit from Attorney General for Systematic Deception of Students, is related to this topic.