For Profit College Risk - Huge Debt, questionable degree [View All]

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- Dane Lockman saw a commercial advertising Westwood College while watching late-night television. The then-29-year-old single father, with a budding interest in web design, decided he would be the first in his immediate family to attend college.

By October 2006, he was enrolled in the for-profit institution to complete a bachelor's degree in graphic design. To pay for school, he took out $40,000 in private and government loans.

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Today, he's without a degree or a full-time job and unable to pay back his loans. He says his savings are gone. His credit score is shot because of his student debt, and he can't get credit cards. His student loans will incessantly haunt him, even if he declares bankruptcy.

Lockman is not alone.

At least 750 former Westwood students and employees have come forward with complaints about the school engaging in deceptive recruiting practices that have left some students with an unmanageable amount of debt, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, Colorado, in August.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/09/02/for.profit.college.debt/index.html?hpt=C2