Posted on 08/21/2010 6:39:19 AM PDT by inflorida
A for-profit college is facing a lawsuit filed on behalf of students who say the school ripped them off. It's the latest in a series of hits the for-profit higher education industry has taken recently.
Earlier this month, investigators showed members of Congress that some schools use high-pressure sales tactics and deceptive marketing to lure students.
Krystle Bernal, 25, says that was her experience at Denver-based Westwood College. Bernal is one of the lead plaintiffs in the class action suit.
In 2005, Bernal vowed to become the first in her family to get a bachelor's degree. She met with a representative of Westwood College who, she says, acted more like a salesperson than an adviser.
"I was really hesitant — she could tell — and she just told me, like, 'I don't think you want to better your life. I don't think you want to better your future. If you can't commit to this, you can't commit to school,' " recounts Bernal.
Bernal says she was told that with a fashion merchandising degree from Westwood, she'd pull down a $65,000 salary after graduation in three years. The cost of the degree was a bit of a shock — $75,000 — but Westwood helped Bernal get federal student loans.
Two years after graduating, the only work she can find is a $12 per hour, part-time job as a bank teller.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
fashion merchandising? Is that degree for working at the gap or something equally stupid?
Objective of this story? Put all education under federal control.
I love it when they eat their own.
Reality meets Indoctrination Center. Time to close the Liberal Indoctrination Centers and make college degrees about obtaining useful, marketable skills. Libtard studies and hand holding are not useful degrees. Of course, like our high schools, if students were graded on their proficiency in English, Math, Geography, Economics and History; most of their teachers couldn’t qualify to teach.
Meanwhile, all the art history, womens’ studies, French literature, etc. majors who got degrees from traditional colleges have high-paying jobs and have no student loan debt whatsoever!
The scent of the plaintiff’s lawyer is not a brilliant defense, is it.
As for the plaintiff, maybe if she’d studied logic in high school, she’d have been able to pick out the flaws in the recruiter’s arguments.
Should have trained as a bank teller immediately after hs graduation. She’d have been way ahead by now.
Well, I can personally attest to this practice being used by Scottsdale Culinary Institute. My former brother-in-law was promised all kinds of things by their representative, spent 35K (all loans), and then could only find jobs in the far back part of restaurant kitchens chopping vegetables along with a bunch of illegals. Extremely stupid on his part, but SCInstitute did make specific promises about all kinds of glamorous jobs.
Caveat Emptor.
I truly wish there would be class action suits against the non-profit universities as well.
I truly wish there would be class action suits against the non-profit universities as well.
What is the old adage: a sucker born every minute and two to take his money. All these for profit colleges are doing is building upon the business models of most other “higher education” programs. Most of these schools are just like their models except they have no endowments. They are simply the modern day equal of getting a degree from a school known as “close cover before striking match university.” Of course, with the advent of the federal government throwing money at the wall and hoping some of it sticks resembling a useful degree, what did anyone expect. Yeah they got scammed...so has the taxpayer. The education industry and its fellow travelers move on.
Common law fraud is more like it.
So she’s suing because she chose a degree with limited job prospects, and lots of competition from unskilled workers, which drives down both demand and salary? Interesting.
The current state of the economy might have something to do with that.
A bachelors degree in fashion merchandising sounds like it trains you to be a fashion nazi. That kind of degree right there should tell you its a scam.
A better plan would have been to attend a Community College (I see in Denver there's The Community College of Denver), earned an AA degree, then transferred to a 4-year college. I'd bet that by the time she completed her 2-year program, she would have had enough knowledge to make a better choice for completing her undergraduate program.
Places like Westwood College are better suited to people who have been in the work force for a while, and (hopefully) have more common sense than a recent high-school graduate.
Well, let's not go from one extreme to another. Let's dig a little deeper into this case.
After Googling for Westwood College, I found this:
Westwood College Investigated By Federal Gov't
So, it seems that Westwood so-called "College" was a diploma mill that charged up to $75,000 for an "online bachelor's degree" and that Westwood would help applicants commit fraud in order to obatain $75,000 of our tax dollars in Federal student loans.
Obviously, something is rotten in Denver.
Contrary to most that have posted on this subject I think the government has some responsibility in all this.
I do not know when it happened, but these type of loans can not be discharged in bankruptcy.
So the government gave these lenders a gift. They can loan money with NO fear of not being paid back.
So if the government gurantees one side of the contract, perhaps the government should gurantee the other side as well.
My proposal the school must put in writing before the loan what the student can expect after graduation. If after graduating the student can not find the job at the salary level promised, the loan is null and void.
Any time you get the government involved in private dealings unintended consequences happen.
I would prefer the government did NOT gurantee student loans, and I would prefer any such loans be handled as is any other debt.
It goes deeper than this - for years, we’ve been scammed by the myth that ‘a college degree is essential for every worker’, promulgated by the Higher ‘Education’ industry, and abetted by HR Managers that ‘require’ a college degree for every position above Floor Sweeper...
Most of these fraud schools wouldn’t exist if it weren’t federal student loans.
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