Huffington Post features an article about Ashford University, a for-profit “educational institution” with a quaint 5 building campus into which, through the miracle of private enterprise, the internet, and a massive dollop of fraud, its owners manage to cram approximately 76,000 students. The entire article is well worth reading, but for the lazy, I’ll condense it by presenting the business plan:
Buy a failing small college, along with its accreditation, which is good for 10 years, no questions asked by the government or the accrediting agency. Use pictures of the campus for marketing, but conduct 99.9% your “courses” on-line. Induce gullible potential students trying to improve their lives into borrowing money from the federal government to take your worthless course offerings. Keep your fish on the line for the four weeks that are required in order to allow you to keep the course proceeds, then cut them loose.
What a scam. It essentially amounts to borrowing massive amount of money from the government that only someone else is legally liable to repay. Who cares that the poor suckers will incur a debt for which they get no value, and which, thanks to punitive bankruptcy laws, they can’t even discharge. After all, what could be more despicable than someone who defaults on a student loan? Of course, when the day arrives, as the day surely must, when Ashford University feels the need to file for bankruptcy, no law will prevent it from doing so, nor will the criminals behind this scheme be forced to disgorge a penny of the money they have stolen from their hapless “students”.
Our Republican overlords work themselves into high dudgeon at the thought of public workers making a decent living, thereby somehow imposing a crushing burden on the middle class. How many Republicans will get incensed about the waste, fraud and abuse involved in for-profit “educational institutions” sucking at one of the many public teats reserved for corporations only?
Post a Comment