The pressure on private for-profit colleges and universities is mounting, as another institution faces allegations of deceptive practices.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed a lawsuit against ITT Technical Institute, claiming that the college exaggerated its job placement rates and misled students, according to WCVB 5 in Boston.
The lawsuit targets the Computer Network Systems Program of ITT.
“These students were exploited and pressured to enroll with the promise of great careers and high salaries, but were instead left unable to repay their loans and support their families,” Healey said in a press release.
Admissions representatives, when recruiting students, said that placement rates within the field of study were between 80 percent and 100 percent, but the actual rates were closer to 50 percent or less.
The attorney general’s office also questioned ITT’s claims of “hands-on training and personalized attention” in its program.
As student loan debt climbs and higher education criticism gets more political support, for-profit colleges have become an essay target for lawmakers. The Obama administration instituted a “gainful employment rule” that targeted for-profit colleges and made federal funding dependent upon the results, not promises, of for-profit administrations.
In December, Higher One Inc., a lending institution that focused on student loans, was ordered by the Federal Reserve to repay $24 million in fees to roughly 570,000 students for deceptive practices. Corinthian College was also punished by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for a “predatory lending scheme” and ordered to repay $531 million to its students.
For its part, ITT denied wrongdoing. A spokesman called the Massachusetts investigation a “fishing expedition” and misleading. The school operates more than 130 campuses across 38 states and serves more than 45,000 students.
Investigating the empty promises of higher education is a long time coming, but so far, investigations have been limited to for-profit colleges. If deeper change is to occur, however, the federal government will need to expand its investigations into non-profit schools. The most blatant deceptive practices have belonged to for-profit colleges, but when looking at the graduation rates and debt levels that result from a public college education, it’s hard to see many differences.
