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n2doc

(47,953 posts)
Sat Jun 7, 2014, 09:24 PM Jun 2014

For-Profit College Enrolls, “Exploits” Student Who Reads At Third Grade Level

BY DAVID HALPERIN
A librarian at a southern California campus of Everest College abruptly resigned last week, deeply upset that the for-profit school had admitted into its criminal justice program a 37-year-old man who appears to read at a third grade level. The man, who shakes, speaks haltingly, and may suffer from a developmental disability, told the librarian he expected to be a police officer after completing the program. But the librarian, Laurie McConnell, is certain he can never obtain such a job.

McConnell, who had been devoting much of her time at work to helping the student with his reading assignments, wrote to the campus’s president on May 21 that the student would be “impossible to place in the field” and had “no idea of the ramifications of signing the enrollment agreement” at Everest. But the president, Richard Mallow, did not give her a response. McConnell quit on May 27, four days after she first contacted me to say that the student was “being defrauded” by Everest. “He breaks my heart,” she told me, “and I feel completely helpless.”

Everest is owned by for-profit giant Corinthian Colleges, which is facing a lawsuit for fraud by the attorney general of California and is under investigation by 17 other state attorneys general and four federal agencies. Kent Jenkins, vice president for public affairs and communications at Corinthian, told me today that the campus believed it was appropriate to take a chance on admitting the student. He also raised the possibility (see below) that Corinthian would refund some or all of the student’s costs if he ended up dropping out.

Corinthian in recent years has received as much as $1.46 billion annually in taxpayer money, about 83 percent of its total revenue. That $1.46 billion represents nearly 4.5 percent of the colossal $33 billion that for-profit colleges have been getting annually from federal student aid.

- See more at: http://www.republicreport.org/2014/for-profit-college-student-reads-third-grade/

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