crossposted from
unbossed
Last week, the New York State Department of Education announced that it had found evidence of misdeeds by a for-profit college, Interboro Institute. Interboro was accused of changing students' answers on qualifying exams and lying on student financial aid applications. The U.S. Department of Education is also examining its administration of federal financial-aid funds. A review found that only 2 of 100 students had completed their educations within the 16-month period Interboro advertised. Stories here and here.
Interboro Institute is one of those fast-growing, for-profit colleges that recruits (or preys on) needy students who have not graduated from high school.
What About the Students?
The students lacked the qualifications to succeed at the college level, as Interboro must have known. But the point was to turn a profit, and if that had to be done by cheating students out of an education and hopes for a better life and engaging in some fraud on the loan agencies, so be it.
Could the students have known there were problems with Interboro?
Unlikely, I think. Do a search for Interboro Instiute, and all that comes up is advertising for it in one form or another. And that is more than a week after this story broke. How could a high school drop out - or anyone - know that choosing Interboro was anything but a smart choice?
If you want to see what I meant by "advertising in another form", take a look at New York Mentor. NYM says great things about Interboro. The site has links that make it look as if it is a very helpful website whose very purpose is to provide fair and balanced information. Only to the well educated or highly sophisticated, may it be clear that the information on Interboro is written by Interboro itself. Whatever mentoring New York Mentor does it is unlikely to be monitoring or evaluating Interboro's claims.
So, we all may ask: What is NYMentor? If you dig, you will see that NYMentor admits that it represents the colleges and universities of New York. It presents the trappings of assisting those who want to better themselves through education, but the point of the appearance is to funnel students to its real clients. Rather than helping the students, it is just one part of a system that helps those who help themselves to a piece of the pie.
The other category of links that will turn up in a search are those for companies willing to sell you information about buying stock in this for-profit. It's amazing how many bucks there are to be made from higher education - not by the students, of course. Telling them that enrolling at these institutions is the ticket to higher earnings and job security is on a par with selling shampoo as a way to guarantee us love and bliss.
A Loan Profit?
Should you be interested, Interboro is not a lone loan arranger. Its parent company is EVCI Career Colleges Holding Corporation, whose president is John J. McGrath. EVCI's chief financial officer, Joseph J. Looney. Here is a reportit recently put out on its financials.
Miserable for-profit schools must love company. Also last week, American InterContinental University was put on probation by its accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Link. Being put on probation, however, is apparently not good for for-profit's profits.