My foray into the for-profit education industry began as a lowly office clerk. I had a accepted a job with the Los Angeles Film School which at the time had just joined forces with the mega-behemoth Full Sail University.
For those that do not know Full Sail University was touted by former Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney as being cost effective and high quality while on videotape. Since making these statements on video the likes of Rachel Maddow have debunked the claims with critics stating these institutions leave people in debt with little to no job prospects.
When I first started working for the company I had no prior knowledge of the industry. I thought I had signed up with a prestigious private institution. Also I would have described myself as a pro Department of Education guy. Pell Grants played a big factor later on in my college career and it allowed me to spend more time on my studies.
Needless to say that not long after a couple of months my views changed. One Saturday a month was spent working setting up the school tour which basically just tried to impress potential students by showing them the classes and fancy gear. It was a lot of razzle dazzle with a lot of sales pitches going on. The "everything's great here this is your ticket to Hollywood enroll now!" type of pitch. Even though I was working on a weekend these days didn't suck because I was usually doing something way more interesting than counting other people's money.
My position had a lot of accounting duties. I could see that the majority of the money made was from the Federal government. The students acted as a kind of conduit in which they took out all the public and private loans and the school was paid immediately. In addition to these loans there were also those handy Pell Grants that saw me through my junior and senior years of college.
Fridays were particularly busy because students would receive their funds for living expenses. Now I began to make some telling observations. The overwhelming majority of people showing up were usually black and almost always came from some inner-city. I highly suspect that many were on some form of welfare and just considered the money as "another check." Talking with some of these people left me with the impression that they felt entitled to a lot of things including the money. Of course there were latinos and whites coming in for financial aid money but the great majority were black. Many of these people were sold on the idea that if they went to the school and graduated they would have high profile careers in music, movies, or television.
The cities the people came from were always Watts, Compton, Detroit and other similar areas around the nation. The recruiters, who always had the demeanor of a used car salesman, constantly call these people and encourage them to enroll. I know this because I started getting the calls but I had to actually tell the callers that I actually worked for the school and attended the school tour as training.
Contrast these typical Fridays to the time around graduation, which is once a month because institutions like these are diploma mills, and the crowd becomes different. The inner city black students are nowhere to be found, in most likelihood they have dropped or flunked out by now.
Which is bad for them because they are left with thousands, or tens of thousands, dollars of debt which can only be discharged in death with no degree to show for it.
Most students are required to buy a Macbook with bundled software ($2,500) which the institution does sell at cost with no profit. Sounds like a great deal right? Not exactly. When students have graduated (or have not graduated) and are left with a huge amount of debt one of the first things negotiated is to return the laptop to apply it towards the balance of their debts. The software, of course, is not returnable so that is a cost the student has to take. Most of students I noticed opt for turning in the laptop. In essence they rented a high end laptop and bought software they can no longer use.
There's also the fake student housing office. Whenever a student looks for housing the institution suggests luxury apartments in Hollywood that are above a Trader Joes. Those familiar with Vine and Sunset should know this place. The rent must be above $2,000 a month and of course the school gets a kickback from the apartment complex owners. I know this because I handled the books.
The owner is friends with Mitt Romney and is definitely one of the 1% people are always talking about. I've seen YouTube videos of his various homes and we are talking mansions upon acres and acres of land. The CEO is a Harvard Law Graduate who used to represent the oil industry. She was in Barrack Obama's class. If anyone were to shout CRONY CAPITALISM at this the notion wouldn't be far fetched.
During my time with the company I strongly suspected that recruiters were signing up the homeless and mentally ill. If they have a pulse and you can get them to withdraw the maximum in public and private loans I guess they are fair game. While poking through files, they are way entertaining to read, I came across an incident where a letter of collection was sent to a mentally ill student. The mother, who was a lawyer, sent a voracious letter threatening to counter-sue. She stated that her daughter did not have power of attorney to sign any documents for herself, and that the school's recruiters were well aware of this fact but had her sign anyway. On top of this her daughter went missing for an extended period of time and when police finally found her she was wearing a male student's clothes and was covered in blood. I do not think they pursued that collection case.
While reading through notes in the college database system about an irate caller I had dealt with I read that this particular person had called another department and threatened to come shoot everyone in the administration who could not help him. Banned for life from the premises? Not really, the school had him come in to sign documentation that he would pay his debts. This guy came into the building, into my office, and there were no security posted. It was so important that he come down personally and sign these documents that risking a whacko shooting everyone Columbine style was acceptable.
I read another document about gangs attending the school who would attack other students for their laptops. Then another document was lying around saying that the staff were holding parties with students and getting them to smoke marijuana and probably having sex with them. It goes on and on... never a dull moment.
When it comes to military veterans these recruiters turn into sharks that have smelled blood in the water. These type of institutions are only allowed to take in 90% of their profits from Federal sources but somehow the G.I. counts as private money. Therefore they make a lot of that ten percent margin through military vets.
To maximize profits staff are kept to a skeletal minimum and are paid very poorly with crappy benefits. On odd days we would have the average rich person come bring $40,000 worth of cash. Instead of having bill counters and safes we had hand counting and flimsy lock boxes in filing cabinets. If they're cutting corners on money storage and security they are probably spending the bare minimum per student on education. Many articles I have read state this is the case. That's the difference between a "for-profit" college and a "not-for-profit" private institution like USC.
My time there had definitely colored my views on the educational system and business in America. I am now leaning towards totally getting rid of the Department of Education, which is a very Libertarian position to hold. I think most mega-corporations in America are profitable solely on their ability to make relationships with government and extract tax money from the average citizen.
The industry comes under fire and rightly so. Usually The Huffington Post is always leading the tirade against the industry. Senator Harkin seems hellbent on destroying the entire industry. He should be because he is short-selling most of the publicly traded for-profit education companies. The for-profit education system has been termed "subprime education" due to its parallels with the housing industry prior to the bubble crash.
The whole point to sharing my experiences is this: Why go to a shit school, with dangerous people that accepts anyone with a pulse, when you could drop that kind of cash at an institution like, I don't know, say USC, Harvard, or American Film Institute for that matter? America seems to love paying higher prices for low quality shit (like healthcare, cable, Internet) and the for-profit education system is an example of this.
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