For Profit College Risk - Huge Debt, questionable degree

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

I looked up some of the information and controversy about the University of Phoenix. They are the largest of the for-profit universities, and they have faced some accusations, too. At least they are regionally accredited. It is important to prospective students to look at accreditation as well as financial aid. If credits do not transfer or prospective employers do not recognize programs as valid training, people can be in a lot of debt with nothing to show.

So many community colleges and four-year schools offer online programs and classes. They are cheaper than these for profit schools, too.

My daughter used to teach online music history and appreciation courses through the community college system in Chicago. She won awards for her course design. She had immigrant, older, minority, and non-traditional students of every type. Many of them had no role models, because they were the first in their families to take any type of college class at all. She and her colleagues were careful to design coursework and to plan for working with these non-traditional students. Most of them were highly motivated. She gave a flute recital at one of the churches in Chicago. She invited her online students. I was touched by how many of them took the time to attend. They had never met her except through an online class!

Please be careful everyone. As the job prospects dry up even more, people will go back to school. Look out for yourselves.

In that if you take it seriously it's possible to actually learn something from Phoenix, even if nobody takes your degree seriously afterward. I say avoid it like the plague; you're better off at your local community college.

bad idea...they encourage students to take way more money than they need and the student is then stuck with it even if they file bankrupcy because student loans are not forgiven...I commend Obama for putting these loans back where they belong - with the government...

smart/have good grades to get in. And to me that meant finding out ahead of time what it was all about. I learned that you needed to check the reputation of the school you wanted to attend.
Playboy magazine was one of my sources, and they listed the nearby school as the "party" school, and the school I went to as the "study" school. They also used symbols. And for my school, they used the symbol "nose to the grindstone" and a sketch of a student turning a grindstone with nose on the wheel.
So that's where I went.
That is part of the analysis. In those days, oh so long ago, people made fun of and mocked and ridiculed 'mail order schools'.
'Correspondence' schools.
And questioned what good their diploma would be.
I guess the young people are more gullible today.
Forget about the football team business. But the school I did go to did have a super, well known football team. In fact that's all most people talk about when they hear the school name.
dc