Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Corinthian Dismantling Continues - Michael Stratford, Inside Higher Ed

The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday fined Corinthian Colleges nearly $30 million for misrepresenting job placement rates at its Heald College chain, which officials said the troubled for-profit education company must now begin the process of closing. Department officials said the Corinthian-owned Heald, which mostly operates in California, provided inaccurate information about graduates’ job prospects at each of its 12 campuses, with 947 misrepresentations in total. The department ordered Heald to stop enrolling students and begin closing its programs, which currently enroll 9,000 students in California and at smaller locations in Oregon and Hawaii. As long as the company keeps those colleges open, department officials said, students will either be allowed to finish their education or transfer to other institutions. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement that the department’s actions “should be a wake-up call for consumers across the country about the abuses that can exist within the for-profit sector.” https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/15/us-fines-corinthian-colleges-30-million-and-effectively-closes-heald-chain