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Sheryl S
Latest posts by Sheryl S (see all)
- Private Student Loan Horror Story - May 24, 2016
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- DeVry University Lawsuit Filed By The Federal Trade Commission CSD - March 24, 2016
Over the past couple of decades, one thing that has certainly served to contribute to the current student loan crisis has been the prevalence of for-profit schools making pie-in-the-sky promises to students in order to get them to enroll and then bailing out on those assurances once they’ve received their tuition money. A number of trade and technical colleges stand accused of guaranteeing students help in finding a job and giving bad financial assistance advice, as well as of teaching practices that have devalued their degrees to the point that they are effectively worthless.
A common experience that many students of these programs have shared is that of being told by recruiters that there were plenty of well-paying jobs in the field they were considering and that they would receive job-placement assistance upon graduation, as long as their grades met a particular standard. Once they met the requirements and requested this assistance however, they were repeatedly and routinely blown off by the schools’ recruiting offices and left on their own to look for employment, at times in an extremely unstable job market.
Students have also talked of being pulled from their classes by financial aid officers when they were well into their curriculum and being pressured into signing up for private student loans right there and then. The only alternative, they were told, would be to leave school immediately and forfeit all of the work that they had already completed. On top of that, since they had signed up for the full course, they would also be held personally responsible for paying off the remainder of their tuition bill on their own.
Aside from these questionable recruiting practices, there are many claims that the hiring of incompetent instructors and fraudulent passing of students who did not meet basic graduation standards contributed to a chronic devaluing of the schools’ degrees. In addition, courses that should have been included in the curriculum often weren’t, meaning that graduates of these programs were left wholly unprepared to function in the field for which they were supposed to have been trained.
As graduates have started to voice their dissatisfaction with these for-profit colleges, one thing has become abundantly clear. At least some of these schools made a choice long ago that turning a profit is their biggest priority and that educating those who enroll in their programs falls somewhere far below that. Without more regulation of these over-promising and under-delivering colleges, this disastrous trend is all but guaranteed to continue.
If you have questions or comments, please chat in the comments below or on the ChallengeStudentDebt Twitter handle.
If you feel you were defrauded by the school you attended or you are being treated poorly as a distressed borrower by your creditors, take the free challenge debt review to find out what options you have regarding your student loans.
