Posted on 05/29/2015 9:12:57 AM PDT by libertas~prosperare
The ITT Technical Institutes have been under scrutiny for years – and still have yet to have a day in court. In recent news, the piling on continues by the Miami Herald who chastises the state education board for allowing ITT Tech to continue to enroll students instead of shutting it down based on allegations. The unprecedented assault persists on yet another career college that has been operating on solid footing for 45 years. Our established decades of service to non-traditional students and veterans is now only a negative and repeating headline – and a chorus of cries for change.
Enough.
The piling on from members of Congress to government agencies has pulled us off mission and into court, administrative appeals and petty bureaucracies – with actions built on misinformation, false facts and allegations only.
To date, not a single finding of fact has occurred in the light of a public arena where ITT Tech has been able to defend its reputation in courtroom or anywhere else.
We've produced hundreds of thousands, if not millions of paper documents, to federal and state authorities.
While the new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing adds to the pile, we still have not a single finding of fact or wrongdoing to confirm allegations made about ITT Tech.
We've seen authorities rush to judgment with questionable actions and also foot dragging that has kept regulatory hammers hanging over the fate of this institution for years. This is an ideologically-driven tactic, pure and simple – with little to no thought for the fate of students enrolled in our programs or working toward employment in their chosen field of study.
The most current action by the California State Approving Agency for Veterans Education is a clear example – as it denied enrollment to our students based on false facts and erroneous information that we are now in the process of correcting. Despite this flawed logic and failure to be precise with facts, even citing inaccurate statements about our financial status, other government agencies have been encouraged to follow in their footsteps.
The challenge of the 21st century is to educate non-traditional students and ITT Tech has consistently been able to meet that challenge, including being able to meet the demands of our base of over 14,000 employers nationwide who have hired our graduates in the last two years.
Our record of service to non-traditional students speaks for itself. Our graduation rates are twice that of community colleges who serve the same student demographic. Approximately 70 percent of our 2013 employable graduates obtained employment in their field of study using knowledge and skills obtained from their programs. We awarded more than $240 million in scholarships to students nationwide last year. And, more than 3,000 employers nationwide provided feedback on our curriculum in 2014 to help us meet the needs of employers.
Members of Congress and government entities alike can, and will, seek political points by attacking career colleges and entering into the growing debate over student debt and outcomes. We've come to expect these unjust assaults and will continue to work diligently to defend what matters most to our students – their education, their graduation, and their employment.
ITT Tech is proud of its 45 year record of service to students and we will defend it. The rush to judgment, before a finding of fact, is unwarranted and it only hurts the students who benefit most from the services we provide.
Let there be no presumption here that we believe we'll be treated fairly, but we'll continue to do what we can for our students despite all the unsupported regulatory and litigation roadblocks being put in place.
The Left’s attack on tax paying colleges is astounding. It is as good an example as any of a government destroying American businesses and personal reputations purely for ideological and political reasons. Genuine conservatives should be paying more attention to this issue!
This is a defense of ITT, written by ITT. So it holds little water for me.
Instead, do a Google search of ITT reviews and you’ll get a more balanced picture.
Press Release
SEC Announces Fraud Charges Against ITT Educational Services
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2015-86
Washington D.C., May 12, 2015 —
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced fraud charges against ITT Educational Services Inc., its chief executive officer Kevin Modany, and its chief financial officer Daniel Fitzpatrick.
The SEC alleges that the national operator of for-profit colleges and the two executives fraudulently concealed from ITT’s investors the poor performance and looming financial impact of two student loan programs that ITT financially guaranteed. ITT formed both of these student loan programs, known as the “PEAKS” and “CUSO” programs, to provide off-balance sheet loans for ITT’s students following the collapse of the private student loan market. To induce others to finance these risky loans, ITT provided a guarantee that limited any risk of loss from the student loan pools.
According to the SEC’s complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, the underlying loan pools had performed so abysmally by 2012 that ITT’s guarantee obligations were triggered and began to balloon. Rather than disclosing to its investors that it projected paying hundreds of millions of dollars on its guarantees, ITT and its management took a variety of actions to create the appearance that ITT’s exposure to these programs was much more limited. Over the course of 2014 as ITT began to disclose the consequences of its practices and the magnitude of payments that ITT would need to make on the guarantees, ITT’s stock price declined dramatically, falling by approximately two-thirds.
“Our complaint alleges that ITT’s senior-most executives made numerous material misstatements and omissions in its disclosures to cover up the subpar performance of student loans programs that ITT created and guaranteed,” said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Modany and Fitzpatrick should have been responsible stewards for investors but instead, according to our complaint, they engineered a campaign of deception and half-truths that left ITT’s auditors and investors in the dark concerning the company’s mushrooming obligations.”
The SEC’s complaint alleges that ITT, Modany, and Fitzpatrick engaged in a fraudulent scheme and made a number of false and misleading statements to hide the magnitude of ITT’s guarantee obligations for the PEAKS and CUSO programs. For example, ITT regularly made payments on delinquent student borrower accounts to temporarily keep PEAKS loans from defaulting and triggering tens of millions of dollars of guarantee payments, without disclosing this practice. ITT also netted its anticipated guarantee payments against recoveries it projected for many years later, without disclosing this approach or its near-term cash impact. ITT further failed to consolidate the PEAKS program in ITT’s financial statements despite ITT’s control over the economic performance of the program. ITT and the executives also misled and withheld significant information from ITT’s auditor. . .
ITT Tech doesn’t have to be right, for the government to be wrong.
I was hoping for more from fellow conservative Freepers than a regurgitation of the Administration’s SEC press release with unsubstantiated allegations. This is EXACTLY my point. They tarnish business they don’t like with BS charges and we do nothing but say...well where there is smoke there must be fire. We have lost an awful lot of good companies that way...just ask the coal industry.
Not all of these places are iffy. DeVry, for example (especially in Chicago) impressed me with their graduates years ago. My employer hired many of them. Some of our best and most profitable products were envisioned and designed by people with a two-year degree and some experience.
Yes! Google is a good source of non biased information.
There is something wrong here. ITT Tech is either a Christian based organization or it is not making the required payments to the mafia (Democratic Party).
Bill Gates, and others, learned this the hard way. He and Microsoft was being pursued in courts everywhere. It stopped when they began to support the mafia and establish the requisite foundations.
Ha! You've got a point there. A good many positive reviews are written by the companies themselves, and a good many negative ones are written by disgruntled ex-employees.
Nevertheless, it's a place to start.
Well said.
The bribe money needed to be spent wisely!
The bribe money needed to be spent wisely!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.